Community Living: How to Green your Holidays and How to Give Green Gifts

Are you dreaming of a white Christmas and still hoping for a green one? Give your family the greenest gift of all. Made in Canada matters. Learn how you can have it both ways.

How to Green your Holidays and How to Give Green Gifts?

The Tree - Thinking about whether or not to buy a real or artificial tree this year? This Christmas why not see if you can buy a “living tree” that you can plant when the season is over. Select a tree that is indigenous to your area and can stay planted in a pot outdoors until the spring thaw. If you prefer a real tree, choose one that is specifically grown to be cut down for the holiday season.

Wrapping Paper – Choose your alternate solution to wrap your gifts. These might include reusable gift bags, fabric, coloured boxes, and baskets and tie them up with cloth ribbon. Kids and grandkids love to make their own designs and homemade cards. If you still love the idea of pretty festive wrapping paper, then save it and reuse it the following year. Or make your wrapping part of the gift.

Gift tags the greener way. Cut tags out of last year’s seasonal cards or out of wrapping scraps.

Green gifts – Use up all of your points and buy gifts online to save spending your green cash. Gift cards are available for books, fuel and car washes, groceries, movies, restaurants, sporting events or a Canadian charity to name just a few. Most personal service providers offer gift certificates for whatever you are greening for.

Look for sustainable forestry initiatives in your community and give the gift of planting trees for the future and make the donation in someone’s name. Visit www.sfiprogram.org for more information.

If trees aren’t your thing and flowers are, most towns have local area beautification programs where you can sponsor a garden in a median, along a boulevard or even on a freeway.

Grow greener without pesticides. Combat weeds the natural way. Buy your gardeners a weed fork to pluck weeds as they appear.

Choose native species when giving a plant as a gift when its intent is for planting in the garden in the spring.

While you are out shopping, look for easy to spot green symbols and know that these products do that little bit more for our planet with their more environmentally-friendly options.

WWF – Smoochable. Squeezable. Saveable. Help save the planet, one holiday gift at a time. Adopt a caribou today and help protect our natural world. With 13 species available for symbolic adoption, holiday shopping has never been easier. To order, visit www.wwfstore.ca or call 1.800.267.2632.

How to Give Gifts that Give Back

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