Holiday Season

With the approaching holiday season I began thinking of ways to reduce waste and be more eco-friendly. There is so much waste around this time of year with all the wrapping paper and unnecessary gifts. I know I get a lot of things that I just put in the closet and never look at again so I am sure many of my fellow classmates do too. I have done some research on ways to go green this season as well as thinking of some ideas on my own. One idea I came up with was instead of wrapping gifts in environmentally unfriendly wrapping paper and cardboard gift boxes you could give gifts in environmentally friendly cloth bags to be used for grocery shopping and other various things with a gift tag briefly describing the purpose of the bag. Obviously not everyone you give these to will utilize them the way they are meant but we give so many gifts that even if 2 out of 15 people use them it will save a considerable amount of plastic. These are the small steps that can make a big difference.
In doing research on this topic I came across a website called gogreenitems.com. It had an article about this very topic. I found out that you can recycle wrapping paper. I knew you could recycle the cardboard boxes but it is good to know that the wrapping paper could also be recycled. The website also offered many environmentally friendly products. Many of the items would make great gifts. I think this holiday season I will make an effort to give people more useful items. I am also going to suggest some of these ideas to family members. The items sold on the web site are not only organic lotions and things of that nature. They also offer jewelery and purses made out of recycled items. One of the bag was made out of recycled juice boxes and was actually pretty stylish. The article I read also made another important point. It said that since you are going to recieve things that you will not use and things that replace items you already have you should donate them to the less fortunate. I am definitely going to do this because while my family does not face the economic struggle that many others do I can appreciate the fact that some people struggle to give their children gifts. If we have the opportunity to take a little bit of the financial burden off of another family why wouldn't we. I know I am going to make an effort to go green this season and I hope many other people do too.