It's Easy To Be Green For The Holidays!

From the December Memphis Downtowner, courtesy of Lichterman Nature Center...

While the holiday season brings good cheer and good will, it also brings a more solid waste to landfills, harm to the environment, and additional debt to the average American family. Americans throw away about 25% more trash between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve. That's an additional 5 million tons of garbage! Here are some tips for less wasteful and less stressful holidays. So long, Scrooge, and goodbye Grinch!

Be Green for the Holidays!

Tree-Cycle: You have mulch to gain by participating in the City of Memphis Solid Waste Management's program that picks up unadorned trees from the curb and grinds them into valuable mulch. Check with local conservation groups for tree-cycling programs that provide habitat for fish, lodgings for land critters, and sanctuaries for birds. Many nurseries sell firs with the roots still intact so your tree can be planted as a lifelong reminder of this year's holiday cheer.

Card It: Every year, 2.65 billion cards are sold in the U.S. That's enough to fill a football field 10 stories high! Look for cards made with recycled materials. Create your own cards out of scrap paper or newspapers. Send e-greetings to your high-tech circle. Cut up old holiday cards for nametags and decorations on presents--or to use as holiday postcards next year. Give your old cards to charitable organizations that use them for worthwhile projects.

Wrap It Up: Wrapping paper is typically used once and thrown away. Get creative! Use colorful pages torn from magazines, old maps, or the colorful Sunday comics. Or avoid using paper entirely by "wrapping" your gift in reusable decorative tins, baskets, or boxes. If you do buy wrapping paper, find ones made from recycled paper. If every American family wrapped just three presents in re-used materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields. Finally, unwrap presents carefully. Reuse the paper, the decorative bag--whatever was presented to you!

Artful Present-ation: Choose environmentally friendly gifts: a gardening book, refillable thermos bottle, canvas tote bag, battery recharger, or items made from recycled materials. Choose solar power instead of battery power. Other eco-smart gifts include homemade ones--edibles, plants, crafts--and ones that create no waste at all, such as concert tickets, movie passes, restaurant gift cards, a child's first savings account, and gifts of your own time (help rake leaves, babysit, or fix a leaky faucet). Donate unwanted gifts--along with last year's gifts you and the kids have outgrown--to a charity, friend in need, or personw ho would welcome what you don't want.

Shop-aholic: Take your own tote bags or used grocery bags to avoid coming home with an armload of new plastic bags.

Yule (Cata)logs: Like snow, mail order catalogs blanket mailboxes across the nation. Call each company's toll-free number, ask to be removed from the mailing list, and (if desired) added to their email list. Then take those magazines and catalogs to the nearest recycling center. (They can be recycled curbside through the City of Memphis recycling program.)

Party Time! Turn down the heat before guests arrive. The extra body heat of teh guests and the cheer of food and friends will more than warm up the room. For formal affairs, rent or borrow party clothes. Walk to neighborhood parties or carpool, and after the party, don't throw away the leftovers, send home with guests, or share with neighbors, coworkers, elderly friends, or others who weren't at the party.