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Warm Wishes for Resourceful Holidays from EarthWays Center of Missouri Botanical Garden
Holiday Tips:
Give the Gift of Time to Friends and Relatives
Share the Pleasure of Holiday Traditions
Decorating
Gift Presentation
Gift-Giving Benefits Multiplied
Festively Simpler Resources
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Gift Idea: A basket of home energy efficiency aids, including programmable thermostat, do-it-yourself weatherization products, compact fluorescent light bulbs and a tip booklet.
Holiday Greening
What’s your idea of the perfect gift this holiday season?
In a recent poll on this topic conducted by the non-profit Center for a New American Dream, 83% of those surveyed said their dream gift would be more time with friends and family. Over 75% of the poll respondents expressed a desire for simplified holidays.
EarthWays Center offers ideas to conserve your personal energy and resources while reducing the environmental costs of intensive consumerism during the holidays. Start with the “New Dream” organization’s motto: More Fun – Less Stuff!
Give the gift of your time to friends and relatives
- Give a pretty calendar marked with regular get-together dates
- Make a book of coupons redeemable for help around the house or running errands
- Send a set of recycled-content note cards to a loved one living far away, with your promise to exchange monthly letters with them
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Share the pleasure of holiday traditions
- Invite friends over to bake together and divide the results - each cook can take home a variety of treats
- Volunteer as a family to serve a holiday meal at a social-service shelter
- Host a party where everyone sings!
- Simplify gifts with a name exchange. When the family gathers at holiday time, each person in turn receives one gift, but everyone can enjoy the fun of guessing the identity of the giver.
- If your circle enjoys creative endeavors, try gift-giving as they do in the
Netherlands. In a round-robin exchange, each present is a token but each gift presentation celebrates (or chides!) the recipient with a poem they must read aloud about themselves.
- Use and enjoy your china, silver and table linens instead of buying disposable items. After dinner, pass out the dishtowels and enjoy old-fashioned kitchen-sink camaraderie as friends converse or sing while washing and drying delicate items.
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Decorating
- Look for holiday lights that use energy-conserving LED (light-emitting diode) bulbs are now widely available. LED’s use one-tenth the electricity of conventional mini-bulb decorating lights, almost 200% less power than large bulbs.
- Grow your greens. Give evergreen or holly bushes to plant for future hall-decking, or a nursery gift certificate redeemable in spring. Tip: a male and female holly variety must be planted together to grow those ruby berries!
- If you want to decorate a living evergreen, dig a hole before the ground freezes at least 12 inches larger in diameter than the root ball of your living tree. Be prepared to water a living tree’s root ball once or twice daily. Display a live tree away from heating vents, and keep it indoors no longer than one week. Be sure to water a newly planted evergreen throughout the winter too.
- Recycle evergreen trees and decorations. Save them for community yard waste pickup or take them to a holiday greens recycling collection site. They will be ground into mulch or composted.
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Gift presentation
- Reusable gift bags are less wasteful – and quicker to use - than wrapping paper. If you sew, try making simple gift bags out of bargain-table fabric, especially festive prints purchased at close-out prices after the holidays! Swap collections of foil and paper gift bags with friends or co-workers during a holiday get-together, to refresh your stock.
- Re-use maps, last year’s gently-opened papers and the picture pages of pretty calendars to wrap gifts. Missouri Botanical Garden photo calendars make fabulous wrappings!
- Last year’s holiday cards can become colorful, unique gift tags. Cut off the message page with pinking shears or a paper cutter and recycle it. Write this year’s gift message on the picture.
- Wash and save decorative tins and "disposable" plates for reuse when you give gifts of food or take treats to holiday parties.
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Gift-giving benefits multiplied
- Look for Fair Trade items, which range from consumables like coffee and chocolate to clothing to decorative and practical household items. Goods certified by the international non-profit Fair Trade Federation are produced by a wide variety of growers, businesses and craftspeople. All share the common goal of creating a just and sustainable economic system through practices that fairly support individuals and communities that produce these wares.
- Buy locally! Purchasing at locally owned shops invests your gift dollars in the health of our community’s economy. Many local merchants proudly feature Fair Trade items, as well as gift options made in your own community.
- Contributing to an environmental or charitable organization makes a thoughtful and thought-provoking present. For example, a gift to Heifer International, in the name of your loved one, provides animals and training in their care to children and families around the world, enabling recipients to become self-reliant and eventually help others, as your gift of a flock of ducks, chicks or goats grows.
- To wrap togetherness, beauty, fun and community benefit into one compact package, give a membership to Missouri Botanical Garden – along with dates to enjoy Garden strolls together with a relative or friend, in every season!
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Festively simpler resources
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