Want a more sustainable Christmas? UI expert shares tips

‘Tis the season for carefully wrapped presents adorned with bows. For evergreens stretching toward living room ceilings, wrapped in lights and dotted with ornaments. For spinning dreidels and trading foil-wrapped chocolates. For lighting candles one by one, surrounded by family and friends. For celebrating under confetti when a happy New Year finally arrives.

Those festivities, while joyous, also produce waste.

Ordering gifts from around the world leads to increased energy and fuel consumption during the holiday season. And those purchased items — including presents and their packaging — may eventually end up as waste products.

Americans generate 23 percent more waste in December than any other month, according to a 2021 Center for Biological Diversity report. That trash often ends up at landfills, where it releases planet-warming greenhouse gases as it decomposes.

A few simple changes to your annual traditions could help you have more sustainable celebrations, said Stratis Giannakouros, director of the University of Iowa Office of Sustainability and the Environment.

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“We tend to use a little more energy during this time because we want to travel to see family, put lights up and engage in activities that are just not part of a normal life,” he said. “All those things have an incredible impact … so just be cognizant of it.”

Go green with your tree

Artificial Christmas trees are sometimes touted as more eco-friendly than their natural counterparts because they can be reused each year.

But most fake Christmas trees are manufactured outside of the U.S., spitting greenhouse gas emissions with their creation and transport around the world. Even though they’re most frequently made out of plastic, not all artificial trees can be recycled.

The live Christmas tree industry supports up to 500 million trees across the U.S., according to The Nature Conservancy. Those forests nurture soil health and local biodiversity.

“It's not actually that terrible to get a live tree after all,” Giannakouros said. “You're not hurting the planet by buying a live Christmas tree.”

And, once the holiday season is over, you can offer your live tree for another use.

In Cedar Rapids and Iowa City, they can be collected as yard waste and composted as long as they haven’t been sprayed with fake snow. They also can be dropped off at Prairie Park Fishery at 2125 Otis Rd. SE in Cedar Rapids between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., where they will be used for fish habitat as river ice melts in the spring.

“Getting a real live tree is a more sustainable option in that sense,” said Giannakouros, who also noted it can be most costly to buy a new “real” tree each year. “If you have a plastic tree, just keep it and run with it as long as you can because the emissions are already baked into it.”

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More efficient holiday lights

The sun may set sooner during the winter months, but holiday lights keep nights bright — at an extra cost to monthly utility bills.

“All the Christmas lights are extra energy we burn in our homes,” Giannakouros said.

Instead of using incandescent Christmas lights, consider switching to LED lights, he suggested. They last up to 25 times longer than their predecessors and are more energy-efficient, consuming up to 90 percent less energy, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

And hook your holiday displays to a timer, Giannakouros added: “There's no reason to light up the neighborhood when you're asleep. And the light pollution is actually harmful to wildlife.”

If your holiday lights have reached the end of their life span, there’s still hope for further use. Through Jan. 7, you can recycle them at several locations in Iowa City and Coralville, which you can find at www.icgov.org/recycle. Do not place them in your curbside recycling bins.

Minimizing gift-related waste

The holiday season is laden with plastic bags and cardboard boxes, whether it’s in the gifts you purchase or the packages they are shipped in.

Containers and packaging made up 28 percent of the U.S.’s trash in 2018, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Fifty-four percent of it was recycled, and about 31 percent went to landfills, where it will take anywhere from decades to centuries to decompose.

“Minimizing packaging is a huge thing,” Giannakouros said.

One alternative is to shop locally: “You can walk into a store, support a local vendor and just grab what you need. It's good for the local economy, but it also reduces packaging” and decreases overall transportation emissions.

You also could gift secondhand items from thrift stores to your loved ones, or even gently used items from your own home. Those same presents also could be donated to nonprofits that distribute them to those in need of extra resources around the holidays.

Also, consider gifting experiences to loved ones — maybe a movie ticket or a special date — that don’t require packaging.

Having a sustainable holiday season may make it even brighter for you and your family. But above all, Giannakouros said, prioritize time with your loved ones.

“The definition of sustainability is living well in the present and then allowing future generations to live well,” he said. “Don't miss sight of the fact that this time of year is for family and friends. Focus on that.”

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Brittney J. Miller is the Energy & Environment Reporter for The Gazette and a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues.

Comments: (319) 398-8370; brittney.miller@thegazette.com