Zero-Waste Holiday - Part 1, The Tree and the Decorations - Page 2 of 2

Decorations and Ornaments

Moving on to the next segment – decorations and ornaments!

There are a couple of areas that I would like to touch on specifically due to their individual impact on the environment and their contribution to wastefulness.

Tinsel

The first thing I’d like to cover specifically is tinsel – those long, thin strings of plastic and foil that are used to spread around the tree to make it shiny or look more decorated in between things. Like the fake spider web that is used for Halloween decorations, or the fake grass used for Easter baskets, tinsel unfortunately doesn’t just go away after the holidays.

It ends up outside in the dirt, in the gutter, in waterways, animal nests, and more. And because it’s plastic, it will stick around for a very long time, until it eventually photodegrades into microplastic wherever it ends up. And this can take many years and decades before they even start breaking down – which means there is a lot of possibility for harming wildlife and the environment before it becomes even smaller and harms things in a completely different way.

Since I’ve started trying to prepare my backyard for gardening next year, I’ve found countless amounts of tinsel (and fake spider web), back from when I used to be in elementary school and we used to go all out with the decorations – even decorating the tree we used to have outside. We didn’t know back then the impact of doing this, but as an adult, I can tell you it gives me anxiety to pull it from out of the ground still intact after 15+ years.

So, how can you avoid this? It essentially comes down to one of two options: natural tinsel, or no tinsel at all.

If you feel your tree is incomplete without the tinsel and you absolutely need it, consider taking some old newspaper, magazine pages, or other types of paper, and shred it. Then, you can spread the shredded paper on your tree. You can also spray paint or dye the paper beforehand if you’d like to add color or a specific color to it. Although, I don’t believe this would work with magazine paper, as it’s got a bit of a gloss to it and may not absorb well. If you do decide to paint or color it though, try to use a natural or environmentally safe paint or dye – otherwise, you’re still having a negative impact on the environment.

Luckily there are ways to make natural dye with fruits, vegetables, and even certain nuts. You can check out this article by Gardening Know How to get started on ideas and get some basic information, [5]. There are many resources elsewhere online to make dyes and stains for this purpose, and more – like dying clothes or making home-made makeup!

Other than that, you can reconsider whether you really need to use tinsel of any kind in the first place. If you need one reason to reconsider, just think of the mess you WON’T have to clean up if you don’t use tinsel at all!

Other Decorations and Ornaments

Next up on the list of things to consider for your holiday decorating desires – using recycled materials to make ornaments and decorations!

This can be done in many ways, with many different things! I will just be touching on a couple of ideas, but for a substantial list of ideas, please check out this article by All Free Christmas Crafts, [6]!

If you have kids, and want to get them into being aware of the plastic crisis, this is a great option that is also fun for the whole family!

And, if you haven’t given up using plastic water bottles (which I highly recommend you consider doing as part of your new year’s resolution for 2020), then collect your bottles and bottle caps, and have an arts and crafts day with your kids!

With the bottles, you can paint them to make them decorations in the likeness of characters like Rudolf, Santa, snowmen, elves, Christmas trees, and whatever else you set your mind to! If you really want to go all out, cut out a portion of the bottom of the bottle off, and put a tealight under the bottle to light it up!

Below are some basic examples I made for our upcoming workshop event at First Friday where we turned recycled materials into ornaments and decorations!

After you make things out of the bottles, you can take the bottle caps and make some small snowmen ornaments by gluing three bottle caps together, and painting on the accents of the snowmen, then put a hook through the top to hang them up! And, you can also take the bottle caps, paint some snowflakes on them, and then run some string through the caps to hang them up as well! You can also do this in place of single strings of tinsel, and instead, have a string of bottle cap snowflakes running around your tree!

The last thing with alternative ornament ideas I’d like to hit on is to avoid buying cheaply made ornaments from the big stores like Walmart and Target. Yes, they’re super cute, but you have to consider the fact of where they were likely made, the impact of producing and shipping them from production centers, and how long they’re expected to last.

After the last couple of years of buying the really cute, but totally unnecessary ornaments, I can tell you that they do not last long, even if you take care of them. They are often put together with cheap craft glue and thin, brittle material.

And if you have a basic understanding of capitalism, you will know that this is because these stores make money off of you buying new ornaments every single year. They don’t want you to keep that ornament for years and years, and pass it on to your kids or grandkids as a keep-sake. They want you to throw out what you bought last year to make room for this year’s line of ornaments.

So, save your money and make your own! A couple of things I tried last year was taking some of the small, light-weight knick-knacks and plushies I collected from thrift stores and were gifted over the years, and I either put a hook or string around them to hang up on the tree. They worked out great! I even put a plushie on the top of my tree in place of a star or an angel. Last year it was a small Dumbo plush. Which I felt was very appropriate.

You could also try making your own ornaments by taking some newspaper, cardboard, and other materials, shaping it something, and then using a paper mache technique to cast it and keep its shape. You can check out this article by The Spruce Crafts to learn the basics of paper mache, [7]. I’ve also seen videos in the past of people making pulp out of ripped-up paper and cardboard and then forming it into different shapes. If you do a quick search online, the opportunities are endless!

Now that being said, if you find a well-made ornament somewhere, like a Hall-Mark ornament or a Disney ornament, and you really, really want it – go ahead and get it. That’s my guilty pleasure, so I don’t think you should be judged for it, as long as you try to take very good care of it to make it last. I allow myself one new Disney ornament every year, so I can have a small collection that grows. But besides that one thing I allow myself, I am no longer buying ornaments for the holidays.

Christmas Lights

Lastly, for the decorations portion of this article, I want to touch briefly on Christmas lights in a couple of ways. For one thing, with anything that is using electricity, there is the consideration of the energy and emissions used to produce that electricity in the first place.

With that being said, it’s important to be mindful of this when it comes to your Christmas lights, both inside and outside. For your inside lights and those on your tree, remember to turn the lights off when no one is home or when everyone is going to sleep. I promise you that you don’t need to keep them on for the neighbors or anyone else that is passing by your house and would otherwise see your tree lit up in front of a window.

Secondly, for your outside lights, you should definitely be doing the same thing, especially when these lights are more likely to be using up more electricity, usually due to the fact that you are using way more lights outside than you would inside. Remember to turn them off after a certain time at night, after people are usually done with their tours of neighborhoods that put up all the pretty decorations.

If you’ve ever been to a neighborhood where all the people there have their houses decorated, often referred to as “Candy Cane Lane”, where people drive or walk through a neighborhood that’s been coordinated to be all lit up, you can only imagine the spike in electricity that’s being used. Now, imagine how much energy would be saved if everyone agreed to turn off the lights after 10 or 11 for the night.

Not only does this save electricity as well as strain on the power grid, but it also saves money on your electric bill, and saves on energy and resources used to produce electricity in the first place.

You can do this by either setting a reminder for yourself to go unplug or switch off the lights, or you can set up a timer that does it for you!

Next, in terms of going zero-waste for the lights, try to reuse those lights for as long as you can get out of them. I recently dropped off some old, broken lights I had used to light my deck outside at my local recycling center and spoke with the guy there that I always see when I drop things off. He mentioned how they get hundreds of pounds of lights every year from people throwing them out, and how many are often still in good, working condition. He said he’s seen the same people year after year doing this, which means that every year they are buying new lights.

And while those lights are being recycled for the wiring, the fact that they are buying new ones every year, when the ones they’ve bought from previous years are still working, means that they are not only wasting their money, they are sending a signal to producers of the lights to keep making more and more lights. Which, as you can imagine, means more metal being mined to produce the wires inside, and more plastic being produced to encase the wire and the light itself. This requires a large number of resources that will only continue to increase each year if people make a habit of applying throw-away culture to their Christmas lights.

If you’re taking good care of your lights, and they still work, there is literally no reason to buy new lights every year. And if you absolutely must get new lights, but your old ones still work, please at least consider donating them to a thrift store to get a second chance at life, donate them to a shelter to decorate their facility (if needed – make sure to call first!), or consider using them to decorate your backyard, like how I use my old lights for my deck – which I’ve used for about 10 years now, and they still work even after being out in the heat of summer and even the rain.

And of course, if your lights are no longer working, please contact your local recycling center to see if they will accept them to recycle the wiring and/or the plastic casing. This will, at the very least, keep the metals out of landfills and keep the material from leaching toxic chemicals into the ground and water table.

Whatever you end up doing for your holiday decorations, ornaments, and lighting, just try to be as mindful as possible about everything that is interrelated into this fun part of the holiday season!

Well, I think I’ve covered enough and taken up enough of your time for one article! Hopefully, you’ve got a few ideas on how to go zero-waste this holiday season and beyond!

Remember, I don’t expect anyone to take on all of these suggestions. If everyone picked at least one or two things to incorporate into their holiday this year, it makes a world of difference.

Thanks so much for reading, if you’ve stuck around this far!

Stay tuned for the next part of this series, where I touch on ways to do a zero-waste party, which will be a much shorter article than this one since it will only have one focus!

Resources listed

Pages: 1 2