Greener for Christmas

Sure enough, the season for cheering and sharing and singing and bell-ringing is also the environment's worst time of the year with trash and pollution leading the parade.

Here are some tips for respecting the environment this holiday season.

• Bolster the green in your holiday meals with fresh, local ingredients or visit the organic section of your grocery store.
• Don't buy food because it's for sale. About one third of the food bought during the holidays ends up in the trash.

• Consider an "experience" gift (gift certificates, tickets to an event, or an offer to help a friend clean out a closet don't require any wrapping) that doesn't need wrapping and won't end up in the garbage.
• Give a pass to state or national parks to help your special people reconnect to the world around them.
• Minimize your time behind the wheel by planning carefully.
  
• Consider having a local celebration with nearby family, friends, and neighbors and save on driving time and pollution.
• Plant your tree. A potted or balled tree with roots attached can be planted post-holiday, reducing your celebration's carbon footprint.
  
• Decorate a live tree in your backyard.
• Use natural decorations: Cinnamon sticks, pine cones, and the classic popcorn or cranberry garland
• Use LED lights. They last much longer and consume a fraction of the energy, which leads to greater savings for years to come.
• The U.S. Department of Energy reports that if all conventional incandescent Christmas lights in the country were replaced with LED lights this season, annual energy savings would total two billion kilowatt-hours—enough energy to power nearly 200,000 homes for an entire year.
• Use artwork your kids bring home to wrap presents. Or use brown paper bags that your kids can help decorate.
• Instead of buying gift tags, use last year's holiday cards. Cut them out in interesting shapes and sizes, and write your "to" and "from" on the flip side.

These tips come to you from The Environmental Protection Magazine.