Reduce your eco footprint for Christmas

The Best Gift in the World

To help you on your way to a Green Christmas, The Best Gift in the World is a website that provides a range of green gift ideas - gifts that won't cost the Earth - including compost bins and worm farms, free cycling and bike maintenance workshops and organic food hampers provided by local food suppliers.

To be different this year, give long-lasting presents that will be remembered and used in the future, and most importantly, visit The Best Gift in the World website today.

Wishing you a safe and happy festive season from our Council project team.

How to consume less at Christmas

Christmas is the time of year when we busy ourselves consuming – I'm not talking about the office party but rather handing the plastic over during a mad dash to the shopping centre to get everyone a gift to open on the big day.

Stop for a moment... of the $50 billion that is spent by Australians on gifts around Christmas, approximately $700 million is expected to go to landfill by the following February. Will this include what you give? It's easy to get swept up in the festive season, but can you remember any of the presents you received last year?

Here's an idea: ask yourself if the person really needs what you are going to buy them. Then ask whether there's an alternative... something more useful that you could buy them.

Great tips to reduce the amount of landfill created by Christmas

• Get your family to make a Christmas list. Yes, it does take out the element of surprise but it saves that 'cringe' moment where you have to pretend you love the lace and crochet soap cover from Nana (complete with a cake of imperial leather) = this means landfill!
• Do a secret santa. Write down all of the names and everybody buys for one person. Set a price limit, drop hints and voila… you end up with one great item or experience not a load of cheap, unnecessary rubbish.
• Give an experience. No wrapping or trudging around the chaotic shopping mall required. You can give memories.

Sharing time with loved ones

• A family pass to the zoo or wildlife world
• Organise an adventure like a train trip to the Blue Mountains or take a picnic and a ferry somewhere new

Acts of service – no packaging, no landfill, just time

• Purchase a 2 hour cleaning service for a friend or family member, who doesn't want someone to Spring clean? Services like Airtasker offer a great selection of vetted people.
• Offer your own time to babysit, clean, cook dinner, be the chef/waiter/kitchen hand for a dinner party at a friend's house.

Enrich mind and body

• Teach a friend a new skill yourself or give a gift voucher to their local community college
• Fitness studio membership
• Sewing lessons or furniture restoration classes are a great opportunity to learn how to 'make do and mend' or up cycle
• Opera House or local theatre memberships to provide some cultural enrichment and entertainment throughout the year
• Cooking lessons – do they have a favourite cuisine or would they enjoy a food and wine tour of a particular region?
• A spa treatment – ahhhh

Kids and all that STUFF!

Here are some tips to reducing the amount of STUFF that kids accumulate over the festive season.

• Get them to make a list with 3 things on it. If there is something significant (expensive) ask others to contribute.
• Adopt the policy of one thing in, one thing out. Reducing the amount of things you own helps you stay focused and organised.

What about something that doesn't come encased in masses of packaging, something like a gift of a service? If you're ecologically-minded then you will know that a service has a lower ecological footprint. You're not buying something that's been processed, manufactured and transported to the shops.

So, a service... what about a voucher for a massage, a music lesson, to learn a language or gym membership? Think of something that lasts all year, like an annual subscription to a magazine or carshare scheme.

Maybe, if you want to give something physical and lasting, a new commuter bicycle to start 2014 on the right foot... or pedal... would be the bees knees.

This approach is a little harder for kids, I don't mean the commuter bike (though what kid doesn't like bikes?), but rather thinking about better quality items that will last the test of time, keep them active and interested throughout the whole year, not just until Boxing Day.

If you are giving a gift think laterally and be creative about how you present it... you could wrap it in re-used paper like a section of the newspaper (without pictures works best or a foreign paper), an old map or film posters from the DVD shop, even your kids artwork.

In fact, the wrapping could actually be another gift like nice organic cotton tea towel.

The Story of Stuff

Still a little unsure? Then before you embark on your Christmas shopping list, take a few minutes to visit The Story of Stuff.

This is an excellent website with some illuminating presentations on where the products we buy actually come from.

12 Do's of Christmas this Festive season

Eastern Suburbs people frequently contact our councils for advice about ways to cut back on their waste at Christmas time, whether in the form of christmas wrapping, gifts or even decorations and food.

Randwick Council is supporting Planet Ark's 12 Do's of Christmas,  where you'll find tips you can take before and after Christmas.

Why not do our Eastern Suburbs environment a favour this Christmas and still have a very special and happy Christmas season?