For most of us, our Christmas spirit is rooted in the traditions of food, fun and family, so we put up with the stress of running around, spending lots of money and coordinating schedules. The solution: recycle your attitude towards gift giving. Yes, salvation from stress comes in the form of the three R’s of an environmental Christmas – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle.
And remember we can get as much holiday cheer out of recycling (both our attitude and leftover wrapping paper) as we can out of giving gifts to family and friends.
First, you can reduce stress by giving the gift of an activity. Many event tickets can be purchased online, so you don’t need to leave home to do your shopping.
Ideas for stress free gifts:
- Sports and leisure passes
- House-hold cleaning service
- Yard service
- Magazine subscriptions.
- Public transit passes
- Movie passes
- Tickets to a theatre production, sporting event, concert or other special event
The next step is to reuse everything you can. You can reuse gift wrap or even reuse gifts! Consider hosting a re-gifting circle where you play a gift exchange game with re-gifted items. It’s fun and no one has to spend a dime.
Finally, when its time to clean up, save your community some stress by recycling your packaging and paper. Bring blue bags in the room when presents are being unwrapped. Leave out the foil paper, the ribbons and the bows – consider saving them for reuse – as they are not recyclable.
Finally as a special present to you, check out this awesome video about recycling in the city of Edmonton’s Material Recovery Facility:
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