(Photo Source: likemary.com)

Show some love to the environment this holiday season

Everyone loves celebrating the holidays but can often come at a cost for the environment. With these simple sustainable solutions, you can celebrate the holidays with a reduced environmental impact.

Shop Local Instead On Online
Online shopping can be convenient for getting what you need quickly, but the shipping process involves a lot of waste including excessive packaging and quick shipping involves burning fossil fuels through transportation. This also helps support your community and local businesses through the holidays.

For faster shipping, companies will send things faster meaning they will let a delivery service take half a truck to get it to the destination faster including sending items individually instead of together in one order.

Use An Alternative To Wrapping Paper
Wrapping paper might make a present look more pretty, but is ugly for the environment. Each year 2.3 million pounds of wrapping paper end up in landfills as a result of the holidays and the U.S. population spends $7 million on wrapping paper.

A majority of wrapping paper is also unrecyclable with little regulation on what is recycle-grade. You can reduce by using minimal wrapping paper when possible, reuse with newspaper or magazine pages, and recycle by using basic brown paper.

Give Zero-Waste Gifts
The best gift is something that can be used often with the added benefit of reducing waste. Most zero-waste products also offer to package that you don’t have to wrap to avoid more waste and saves you time on having to wrap another present.

Great options include reusable straws, grocery bags, coffee cups, and water bottles. Final Straw offers a great product with cute minimal packaging for one of the easiest gifts to give.

Real Tree or Fake Tree?
This is a big debate of what is more wasteful since a real tree is only used once while a fake tree consists mostly of plastic. The cons of a fake tree are that it needs additional resources to be kept alive and the gas-guzzling transportation, with the pros that it absorbs carbon and can be composted or turned into mulch after the holidays.

The con of a fake tree is that they consist mostly of plastic and the pro is that they can be reused for years to come. A fake tree is recommended if you intend to use it for a long time and if you get a real tree to buy local or get a tree that is planned on being thrown away by the sellers (also make sure to dispose of it properly).