Akron West Side Leader: Wishing for a Greener Holiday
Filed under: Earth911 - December 27, 2007
By Sandy Barbic
I’m wishing for a greener holiday season.
No, I don’t wish that the snow would disappear. By “a greener holiday season,” I mean one that is environmentally friendly. Here are some ideas that we can all use to make this holiday season and future ones more eco-friendly.
Recycled paper products and newspaper comic pages make unusual gift-wrap. You also can reuse your last year’s holiday wrappings and save them for next year’s wrapping and decorations.
Last year’s holiday cards make great gift tags and homemade cards for this year. If every family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, we would have 38,000 feet, enough to tie a bow around the entire planet.
Even if you don’t want to reuse your holiday papers, you can shred old gift-wrap and use it for colorful packing material. Every year, Americans throw away a million extra tons of garbage, including packaging materials, each week between Thanksgiving and the December holiday season. Anything we can do to reduce this waste would certainly help the environment.
When selecting a Christmas tree, keep in mind that nearly all of the trees sold at seasonal Christmas tree lots are grown on tree farms, so choosing a cut tree doesn’t impact forests. If you want a potted tree, it is best to leave it outside and decorate it there, since potted trees do not thrive in unseasonably warm homes.
Artificial trees do save on fuel used in traveling to pick out a tree each year. However, they are often composed of polyvinyl chloride (PVC), which is a petroleum-based, nonrenewable plastic that pollutes neighborhoods near the factories where it is produced. Artificial trees also consume a great deal of energy during their manufacturing process.
If you choose a cut pine, do not apply fake snow, and please remove all tinsel, because these items cannot be recycled, and you definitely will want to recycle your tree. The National Christmas Tree Association and Earth 911 have a joint Web site where you can enter your ZIP code to find one of the 3,800 tree recycling centers near you. Just go to earth911.org.
According to Paul Wilkerson, of Metro Parks, Serving Summit County, the parks system also has a tree-recycling program for wildlife habitat. Then the trees are chipped and the chips distributed on the trails. There are four areas set up in the parks where you can drop off your trees. To find out where these areas are, call (330) 867-5511.
You also can purchase gifts made from recycled items online at home or at your local library. Simply bring up your favorite search engine and enter “environmentally friendly gifts.” Or check your local news media for “greener” choices.
There also are many worthy charities where you can save and sponsor wild and domestic animals, plant a tree or even provide a goat or a small flock of chickens for a family halfway across the world. All of these can be purchased as a gift in someone else’s name and will have a positive ecological impact. Most of these groups can be found online and include such organizations as the National Wildlife Federation, the Humane Society of the United States, the Fund for Animals, Heifer International, the National Arbor Day Foundation, the Nature Conservancy and more.
These are just a few suggestions, but with a little imagination, you can find a lot more. All of these ideas will help our planet and improve the quality of life for all who live on it. With a little shared effort, we all can have “greener” days for the holidays, and for all the days thereafter.
Sandy Barbic is an education specialist with the Summit Soil and Water Conservation District.