Everyone’s wanting a white Christmas. How about going for a “green” Christmas? Here are some ways to Reduce, Reuse and Recycle this holiday season.
Reduce
- Don’t buy what others don’t need
- Buy experiences, not stuff
- Don’t use bows or ribbons on packages
- Limit the number of gifts you buy per person
Reuse/Recycle
- Save gift bags to use again

- Cut up last year’s Christmas cards to use as gift tags

- Cut up paper shopping bags. Stamp them with a Christmas pattern and use for wrapping paper.
- Save your jars. Put candies, cookies or homemade hot chocolate mix inside and give as gifts.
- Get creative with your decorations. Paint and glitter old light bulbs and use as ornaments. Cut out patterns from old Christmas cards and hang on the tree.
- Wrap gifts in old maps or newpapers.
What other ways can we reduce, reuse and recycle for Christmas?

Did you take pictures of my tree?
Ha! Great minds….
Great tips! 🙂
Love your list! We do a lot of this too! For gift wrap, I use plain paper (either brown or white butcher) but splurge on lovely ribbon, and then gather it all up, pack it with the Christmas decorations, and use it again the next year. We have used some of the same ribbon for over a decade. I love the map idea – that would be great for other occasions too!
I’ve also started washing, sanitizing and saving commercial food jars, and have used them to pack up leftover gravy and chutney for my relatives at Thanksgiving, for hot chocolate mix for the neighbors, etc. We eat a lot of oatmeal, so we save those containers and decorate them and use them to give cookies. We go through spice jars a lot, and reuse them for mulling spice, artisan salts and cinnamon-sugar blends. All of them look much nicer than a baggie or tupperware!
As for ornaments – we decorated our tree with pinecones and sweet gum balls for years until I accumulated more store-bought items.
Fabulous ideas! Thanks for sharing!
Great information here! I really like your ideas. Thanks for linking up this very useful post. I’m closing down the Link Up party for now — I’m trying to spend more time with family. But, I’ll see you around on the other hops. Have a great weekend!
gift tag is a great way to reuse them.