7 Simple Ways To Have A More Sustainable Christmas
We’ve jumped ahead a couple of months. You’re stood there, putting Christmas away and reflecting on the season just gone. With all the waste and ‘stuff’, you wonder how on earth you’re supposed have a more sustainable and eco-friendly Christmas. Every year you try harder, and you get a little more streamlined in your approach each time – but goodness it’s tough to be everything AND have an eco-friendly and sustainable Christmas. We get it. Here at Faye Wellon Ceramics we ourselves are a busy family, running a business, keeping up with the children’s social calendar and classes, and looking after a household. So we put together 7 Simple Ways To a More Sustainable Christmas to help break it down and take some of the pressure off your (and our!) shoulders.
1. Sustainable Present Ideas
Do you find yourself completely stuck for ideas again, or buying things ‘just for the sake of it’? Gifting an experience or a memory held in something, rather than another ‘thing’, is not only sustainable and eco-friendly, but also very special. At Faye Wellon Ceramics we want to create memories with our ceramics and pottery experiences, as well as reduce consumerism for the sake of it. We also believe in handmade with love: How treasured are those rustic and unidentifiable creations that children in our lives have made? How loved is that raggedy doll that you attempted to make a niece/nephew? They hold so much more than something bought and put on a shelf to gather dust, or thrown out as soon as it breaks one week into Christmas.
Here are our suggestions for sustainable Christmas gift ideas:
Gifts through Oxfam and other charities are interesting and impactful – one golden drop of an idea: Bee The Change Or Home - Toilet Twinning – the plaque is just genius!
Gift an experience - Our retreat days are the perfect day of connection, creation and recharging. Give the gift of time and connectedness to that special person in your life, that friend who needs some R&R or the parent who you haven’t spent enough time with.
Secure your loved one a prized place on the Ffern (organic, small batch perfume) waiting list. Then accompany this by making your person a promise voucher, promising to buy them one of Ffern’s luxurious crafted perfumes as soon as they are chosen to become a member. The perfumes are much coveted, and only released on a solstice or equinox. Once a member, they will also have access to the entire archive of fragrances! I mean, what’s not to love.
Want to shower gifts on that special someone all year round without having to lift a finger? Subscribe them to our Me-treat Box.
Go all Ghost on us and buy one of these for the love in your life! Tag us in your finished product, we adore seeing your creations!
Spotify Mixtape – create a good old fashioned mix tape, reliving memories and fun times through the power of music.
Adopt a donkey – The Donkey Sanctuary do great work, and there are many animal charities that could use your support. It’s also a lovely day out to visit the adopted animal.
2. Eco-Friendly Gift Wrapping
Here’s one to share around the Christmas dinner table: according to Wheelie Bins “Approximately 227,000 miles of wrapping paper are thrown away each year in the UK…roughly the distance from the earth to the moon.” Wow! Take and use our tried and tested tips towards reducing consumption and waste:
Find interesting and beautiful pieces of fabric in charity shops. Cut up and use to wrap gifts.
Buy brown paper rolls from the post office or larger stationary stores. This can easily be recycled (it’s not metallic), used to light the fire, or kept and re-used for any wrapping occasion.
Decorate the brown paper with these utterly gorgeous rubber stamps from The English Stamp Company. (Psst! These are great for making your own cards too!).
Tie on foliage, dried orange slices, sticks of cinnamon - voila! Beautiful, simplistic and eco-friendly.
Wrap with little or no sticky tape! Sounds daunting I know, and sometimes tape is unavoidable. We agree, and have this to the rescue.
Western Sketch do delightful premium wrapping paper. Take a look at their Christmas Shop through their Instagram page…the sprouts design gets me every time!
Start to consciously unwrap presents gifted to you, minimising any tearing to the paper. You can now save this paper and begin to build a stock for next year. Re-use and gift again. The sprouts just keep on giving.
Be sure to use our Ceramic Gingerbread Parcel Pals as tags on each present. These can be kept and re-used too.
3. Sustainable Christmas Tree – The Debate
There’s plenty of debate on sustainable Christmas tree options! Dig through our tips to help you make sure your Christmas tree is as sustainable as
possible:
Grow your own! If you are fortunate enough to have a garden, plant your own tree. Then dig it up carefully each year and pot for the Christmas period. Magic. Failing that, grow one in a pot to bring in each year.
Buy a rooted Christmas tree from your local nursery or Christmas tree farm and plant it back out after Christmas. A short conversation with the growers will let you know that on the whole most places are there for the trees and environment as much as the profit.
If you do have a plastic tree, just make sure you use it for at least 10 years to ensure the 40kg CO2e are warranted. A real tree (with no roots) produces roughly 3.5kg CO2e according to The Carbon Trust.
Once the Christmas tree has done its duty, if it has no roots, your local council and some charities will take it off your hands by arranged collection. As long the tree is woodchipped rather than burnt or sent to landfill, all is well.
4. Decorate Like There is a Sustainable Tomorrow!
If you’re anything like us at Faye Wellon Ceramics, you will have treasured decorations that tell stories each year as you hang them up. Decorations that hold memories, and that remind you of connectedness. And you deeply value quality. Look through our best-selling eco-friendly Christmas decorations below. Give as stocking fillers and presents, or gift to yourself as you add to your collection:
Ceramic Hand Painted Baubles – a variety of colours, hung on a velvet ribbon.
Beeswax Advent Candle & Holder – pre-order only, so be quick!
If you are after the candle only, order here.
Vegan Advent Candle option available too.
Festive Gift Tag and Decoration Making Kit – exactly what it says on the tin.
And if you’d like to make your own Christmas baubles, you can come along to one of the workshops we have throughout November and December.
5. Sustainable Christmas Activities – Building Meaningful Traditions
The pressure to consume and do all the shiny activities that the world tries to sell you at Christmas time is intense. And impossible to keep up with, even if you wanted to. Instead, how about beginning your own traditions, that connect and nourish at this busy time of year?
Go foraging together before you decorate – gather anything squirrels have nibbled off or that the wind has blown down.
Bake and decorate those gingerbread cookies! Great to wrap and give as gifts too.
Put on some Bublé (other Christmas music is available!) and make rubber stamp Christmas cards together.
Once it begins to get frosty, get messy in the kitchen and make bird feeder fat balls.
Join one of our bauble making workshops or buy the kit to do at home!
6. Gift Time To Yourself This Christmas
Ok, so with all of this creating and giving, I hear you internally groan “where am I supposed to find the time and energy?” Here are our self-care tips at Christmas time, because you simply can’t pour from an empty cup:
Get up half an hour before everyone else. It feels crazy when you’re tired, but that 30 minutes of headspace will mean you’ll have gathered your thoughts just a little. You’ll have time to ground before everyone else wakes with their demands.
Sitting in silence in candlelight with a cuppa in my very own Faye Wellon Ribbed Mug (I gifted one to myself in my quest to keep nurturing me!) is my favourite way to wake up. And I always feel more refreshed.
Make sure you gift yourself the power of enhanced focus as you set your intentions for yourself and the day. I’ve found the sections and tools in our very own self-carplanner have been so helpful in reminding me nourish myself and stay on track with tasks!
Delegate. Don’t feel bad. Or micro-manage. If you give the food shopping list to your partner, then you have to be ok if they go slightly off piste! Value and find hilarity in the spontaneity that their additions might bring.
Plan. But don’t get overwhelmed by ALL of the things to do before Christmas. Simply do the next thing.
Take one hour a week minimum to delve into your Me-Treat box that has arrived and is waiting patiently for you.
Be as kind to yourself as you would be to a good friend. Read that again. Go easy and remember we are all human. Perfectly imperfect.
7. Saving For Next Christmas
We’ve come back around to the end of the festive season again. You’re done with Christmas for this year and you’re SO ready to freshen everything up for the New Year. But stop! So you can continue the sustainability cycle, all the hard work you put in this Christmas must be cherished:
Carefully pack your precious Christmas decorations away - next year you won’t have to buy more. Other than adding in a few new handmade baubles in from one of our workshops as you continue the new traditions you have begun.
Plant your tree back outside, back in its pot/box, or arrange collection so it can be woodchipped.
If you didn’t receive them as a gift, make sure you’re subscribed to the Me-Treat boxes so you know you can get through next Christmas with at least a half full cup.
Take a moment to feel really good about how your Christmas and festive period had such little negative impact on the planet. We’re proud of you!
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Till next time…
