Ideas for a Merry Eco Christmas

Of all the world's celebrations its Christmas which produces the most waste direct to landfill.

Here are some ideas to avoid Christmess this month.

Decorations
Deck the halls, room and mantle piece with white, red and green bunting. Make it in paper and string, eco-fi, felt and material. Hang a hand-made wreath on the front door or make one using fresh leaves and flowers.

For table centrepieces you could make your own organic gingerbread house as an impressive centre piece; fill vases with beautiful fresh flowers from the local market; have a beeswax or soy candle surrounded by native leaves and flowers; or a small nativity scene.

Lighting
Paper lanterns scattered around the entertaining area looks beautiful during the day as well as the night. Create a beautiful ambience within the home with candles. If you like to decorate your home with multicoloured lights, charge a battery that day using solar panels and then plug the lights into an inverter.

Christmas Trees

The most eco choice for a Christmas tree is to use potted Australian natives such as the Wollemi pine. You can also buy the traditional pine in a pot from various garden shops and Christmas tree farms. Though people believe a plastic tree is a good option as you can reuse it over and over again, the manufacturing process leave a huge environmental footprint and most trees end up in landfill and are not biodegradable. To be different you could make a tree from cardboard and decorate with hand-made cookies or make your own decorations from cardboard, toilet rolls, plastic bottles using non-toxic paints, pencils, and crayons.

Wrapping paper
Saving and using last year's paper, gift bags and ribbons is always a good habit to get into. You can start a new trend and make your own reusable cloth Christmas bags that can be reused over and over again. Other fun ideas include decorating used boxes, your children's drawings that have piled in a box in your cardboard, newspaper, magazines or use brown paper and tie up with strings. Have the kids decorate it for some colour.

Cards/Invitations
Use www.smilebox.com for an electronic card and you can add photos which is great for overseas and interstate family and friends. www.earthgreetings.com.au have a great range of post consumer waste paper and vegetable ink cards, wrapping paper and gift tags. A new and fun idea is to create a card made from pure wool felt and with ribbon. Slot some paper inside it to make a page and write a message on it. The card can be used year after year, you'll just need to replace the middle piece of paper.

Food
Local markets and organic is the best eco-friendly choice in regards to food. Some wonderful farmer's markets do wonderful things around Christmas even with some beautiful traditional home-made Christmas goodies to be found such as jam, sauces, biscuits, cakes, slices and savoury pies etc.