Getting better at a ‘Green’ Christmas (Dec18)

Christmas decorations at home – including reindeer made from recycled bolts and springs and motorbike and lemon Christmas trees

My son Connor led the way to a greener Christmas.  He had some inspiring ideas, from wrapping presents in ‘Who Gives A Crap’ loo paper wrappers, to creating re-usable Christmas gift boxes, that will come again next year.  

Also in his Christmas hamper were several bottles of Rubies in the Rubble, relishes made from waste food and a pair of earrings, which he’d 3D printed from discarded fishing lines.  He’d also chopped up cardboard into kindling and tied them into bundles.  But his main present was sorting out our household recycling.  We now have beautifully labelled containers for every sort of rubbish you can think of – and the aim is for quite a lot of it to be ‘handled’ on site.  He’s refurbished an old can crusher, so we can get that back into operation. Although, it’s virtually impossible to become a zero waste household, we’re doing our best.

Another star present for me was from my friend Tricia.  We have a new barn development and I asked her for some refillable soap containers to put into the bathrooms.  She found some really beautiful ones and a huge container of Faith in Nature soap, which she’d bought from Waste Not Want Not, the zero-waste shop in Bridport. I’m looking forward to going there to explore what else they’ve got to offer – but will remember to take my re-usable container, even if it’s made from plastic.

Talking about plastic containers, the stocking from my husband, wouldn’t be the same without a few items of ‘Tupperware’.  I’m a big fan and use them to store pretty well everything in our fridge and freezer – much better than cling film, or even beeswax re-usable wrappers, although I do have some of these too.

Not forgetting the Christmas tree – we ended up having three!  Actually, the main one was a motorbike, which is on display in our sitting room – so we decked it with lights.  The next is a small lemon tree, where we hung our decorations, along side a few lemons.  That would have been it, except that my youngest son Monty, brought back a plastic tree from University, which would otherwise have gone to waste.  We never need to buy a tree again, as the house looked very festive.