Things We Learned About Holiday Waste Reduction
It’s Friday (did you even know that?) and the holidays are almost over. If you’re not back to the real world already, you will be on Monday (we’re looking at you, students.)
You may have noticed that there’s a fair amount of waste that gets produced over the holidays. We’re all trying to be better, sure, but it’s still a lot, isn’t it? Well, we picked up a few things over the holidays, and we’re going to share a couple tidbits with you here.
Don’t these look fantastic? Remember – Sean didn’t make them. You can spot almost all of the reusable bags here – but also a total holiday waste no-no under Sean’s tree – foil-based wrapping paper is always garbage.
See? We do bad things, too.)
Every year, there are all kinds of seasonal variations in waste generation that municipalities, landfill operators, and waste management companies plan for on an ongoing basis. A major winter storm, for example, could potentially ruin whole loads of potentially recyclable paper fibre if the snow occurs during collection.
The most predictable seasonal variation, however, is the spike in waste generation during the annual holiday season, most of which comes from packaging and wrapping materials.
I’m sure we can all relate. In my house, for example, we exchange (a lot) of gifts. And, like a lot of households, we begin early in December with good intentions to reduce our waste (and waists) at this time of year, only to push that goal to the back burner when the first wave of hustle and bustle hits.
This year though? I saw some real progress in reducing our gifting footprint. Unfortunately, GREENish can’t really take any credit, but we can share the progress with you.
My wife found some old Christmas-y (that’s a thing, right?) fabric scraps in with the decorations and got to work on designing and sewing a whole variety of reusable cloth bags for different sizes and shapes of gifts. The key to the success of these bags is in her not-yet-patented bag ties, which allow the bag to be closed well enough to hide the gift inside (and also approximate some of the unwrapping experience for the little ones). With a variety of extended family in house for the holidays, the bags were used to “wrap” (and then re-wrap, re-wrap, and re-wrap…) nearly 3 dozen presents (big and small) in 2019.
Crafting reusable bags on a whim isn’t a simple task, but my spouse is an expert with the sewing machine, and she also loves to create things with it. This year we were able to find time for her to sit down for a while – that’s not available every year, nor for every family, but we were fortunate this year, helping us take a step forward that will last for years. Moral of the story: find someone in your circle who sews and encourage them to use their talents for good. Or, pick some up from a local producer in your area, and use them again and again and again. (NOTE FROM ADAM: Does anyone else remember the cloth gift bags given out at gas stations in the late 1980’s? It was either Esso or Shell, he can’t remember. Help him out. Email adam@greenishcan.com if you know things.)
Now, it gets even better (as if that was possible):
From “The Cousins”, who are visiting from the West Coast, we received wonderful, home-made beeswax wraps for our kitchen – they even made these as a family activity! They are fantastic and already covering some cherries in the fridge.
I was a little too busy to get anything up on the Blog over the holidays, but with some opportunity to reflect in the New Year, I am super excited that my family “beat me to it” on the waste reduction message. I didn’t help sew any bags, and I certainly didn’t inform The Cousins’ decision on their fantastic eco-friendly gift. (NOTE: They really did beat us to it, as BeeBAGZ, hand-crafted beeswax bags, which are awesome and made locally in Muskoka, will be appearing in the first GREENish Sustainability Box later in January and later on our online store.)
The ‘Green’ movement is often associated with pessimistic messaging about the state of the environment. The daily news can certainly make optimism seem like a bad bet. But when I met Adam 20 years ago (we’re old now) I’d never heard of a beeswax wrap, and today my nieces are making them as gifts, while my house is (nearly) wrapping paper-free because of someone else’s sewing skills.
We started GREENish to help people live a little bit greener, and here we are learning from our family, our friends, and our customers. That’s more than enough to make me optimistic. In 2020, we’ll share some more stories about waste reduction and living sustainably. We’ll try to keep ‘em all positive.
Happy New Year, everyone!
-SH