It’s almost here again! Yes, Christmas. Love it or hate it it’s difficult to avoid.
Here at Freshbinz Ltd, we love Christmas, the party atmosphere, a well earned rest from cleaning your bins, and most importantly, meeting up with friends and family.
Our only problem with the festive season is the amount of waste generated by cards, wrappings, buying too much food and even the presents themselves.
So, if you want to enjoy Christmas but feel you’ve done your best to minimise damage to the environment what are some of the things that you can do?
If you’re doing your Christmas shopping online as so many of us do, it might be worth trying to get several gifts from the same supplier and getting them delivered at the same time. Some companies give the option to have all your orders in one delivery thereby saving not just packaging but the energy that it takes to deliver them.
Christmas cards have been a thing in Britain since 1843, but have they had their day? There are many companies now that for a one-off fee allow you to send unlimited e-cards, and most of them have brilliant graphics and are very detailed. We think it’s quite a treat to have a tinkly little e-card drop into our inboxes. But if you do decide to send traditional cards, and there’s nothing wrong with that, you could try looking for cards with the FSC logo which means the cards have been sourced from sustainably managed forests, and of course buying cards with a charity donation is always a good thing.
Wrapping paper which we at Freshbinz thought was recyclable, mostly is not. Anything foil or shiny can’t be recycled, but more often now companies are electing to produce recyclable paper which will be marked as such. Ribbons and bows can’t be recycled by your council, but they can, of course, be reused for another occasion, which these days is becoming more and more acceptable.
Then of course there’s food! Most of us buy far too much food over the festive season, here at Freshbinz we’re probably as guilty as anyone else, so this year we’re making a concerted effort to write down and buy only what we really need. That doesn’t mean we won’t be having a traditional Christmas feast with all the trimmings, plus mince pies and chocolates. But we’re trying to buy for the number of people who will be eating lunch and not for the five thousand!
So, you can have a happy Christmas and still minimize waste, and while we’re out cleaning your bins we’ll be having a think about what else we can do to make it a great but sustainable Christmas.