Student’s Corner

With the winter holidays just around the corner, now is as good a time as ever to be the “Green Grinch.” Here are just a few holiday traditions I find to be less-than-sustainable:

1. Holiday Lights
   • Quite often, I see people leaving their Holiday lights on 24/7 come December. As beautiful as they look (especially the fancy moving animal ones!), they are giant energy sucks, especially if you’re not the type to hit the off switch
   • So what can you do? Consider both switching to LED string lights and turning the lights off before heading to sleep

2. Gingerbread Houses
   • Sure, gingerbread houses can be a great tradition for the kids, but with companies making their sugary supplies less appealing and less edible each year, it becomes increasingly more infrequent that people will eat their sweet masterpieces. That’s a lot of food unnecessarily going in the trash…
   • So what can you do? Make your own gingerbread house kits! Using supplies from the grocery store, you’ll probably even have leftover food you could use for other meals, decreasing your food wast enormously

3. Holiday Trees
   • Perhaps one of the biggest questions of the holiday season is often, is it more sustainable to purchase a plastic reusable tree or to cut down a live tree every year? Well, consider the following; fake trees produce more than double the carbon emissions than real trees produce, are made with PVC (one of the least environmentally friendly of the plastics, which has been known to produce several carcinogens), and would need to be reused for at least 20 years before the energy saved would be less than using real trees (20 years being a life-span not met by the majority of plastic trees)
   • So what can you do? Opt for a real tree! Real trees are farmed on land usually not suitable for other crops, and by having the trees there, this stabilizes the soil, protects the water supplies, and provides refuge for nearby wildlife. Also, real trees can be composted or recycled in a multitude of ways, whereas nearly all fake trees cannot be recycled
4. Wrapping Paper
   • Gift giving is a great part of the holidays… and a great waste of paper
   • So what can you do? Check out websites that have fun and creative alternatives to typical wrapping paper!
5. Candles
   • Paraphin candles, the most commonly used candles, are made from petroleum. When burnt, they emit harmful chemicals into the air
   • So what can you do? Use soy and beeswax candles instead! They emit no harmful chemicals and are biodegradable

Being sustainable for the holidays does not mean celebrating them any less. Rather, it means being more mindful of the consequences your actions can have!

Written by Teddi Shapiro, class of 2019