Decorating Green this Holiday Season

As much fun as it is to decorate for the holiday season, doing it in a way that is energy conscious and efficient makes it a bit more challenging. With so many different ways and ideas to show your holiday spirit, it is easy to get ahead of yourself with decorations, lights, and so much more. Finding a way to be decorative and stay energy efficient may be tricky, but here are some tips to help with the process.

The most popular decoration is lighting. They come in all colors, sizes, and shapes so it’s easy to get a little overboard. But that amount of lighting, wrapped around your tree, maybe even your home, can sky rocket your electricity bills. LED lights can replace the incandescent strings of lights we typically use during holiday season. These lights can be found at Home Depot or Wal-Mart, among other popular stores.

Even if you decide to use normal lights this season, try to cut down on the time they are on. By setting a timer, this can cut almost half of the energy use and even helps cut down the risk of fire, since the bulbs tend to get very hot. Leaving them burning all night long can be avoided easily with the light timer.

As important as the tree is, buying a smaller one or choosing to dispose the extra pieces can help be green. By purchasing a smaller tree, you have less to recycle when you finally decide to take it down. If you decide you are ready to get rid of the tree, bring it to a chipping factory or maybe even plant it in your backyard so it can be a constant Christmas memory!

Around the states that have sunny bright Christmas months, fake snow is used. This can really be unsafe for not only the environment but for animals as well. While it’s nice to have to really make it feel like holiday time, other things can be used to replicate. Find some natural materials to replace the fake snow.

To bring a new spin to your Christmas tree and even do something good for the planet, try using recycled ornaments. Homemade ornaments are usually the most special, but try turning a piece of artwork into something new that everyone can enjoy. You’ll make the kids happy and your planet happy too. For those homes that not only put presents under the tree, but use empty presents as decoration, consider using less wrapping paper and more craft paper. The wrapping paper rarely is reusable and can end up not being recycled.

Author Bio:Did you get a new phone or music player this year and need to ditch the old one? Bring your items to E-Waste Harvesters and recycle your electronics.  Electronics recycling Phoenix will help create a green environment.

How to waste less this holiday

Our Daily Green found a staggering statistic. We knew that the holiday season also tended to be one of throwing away, but we had no idea how much. According to a study from Stanford University:

Q: How much extra waste is created during the winter holiday season?

A: Americans throw away 25% more trash during the Thanksgiving to New Year's holiday period than any other time of year. The extra waste amounts to 25 million tons of garbage, or about 1 million extra tons per week!

If every family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet. If every American family wrapped just 3 presents in re-used materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields. The 2.65 billion Christmas cards sold each year in the U.S. could fill a football field 10 stories high. If we each sent one card less, we’d save 50,000 cubic yards of paper.

The Peanut Hotline has received national recognition
for environmental leadership.

Use Less Stuff (ULS) offers a great holiday checklist of tips to conserve over the season. One of our favorite tips was a way to recycle those pesky Styrofoam packaging peanuts. The Plastic Loose Fill Council offers a hotline for locations in every state where they can be dropped off.


The Peanut Hotline is America's most successful packaging reuse program. Consumers call the Hotline, 800-828-2214, or visit thier website, for the nearest location that accepts plastic loose fill, or packing peanuts, for reuse. The Hotline has referred close to a million consumers to local businesses that accept plastic loose fill for reuse. The Hotline refers thousands of individuals each month to local drop off sites for packing peanuts.

PEANUT HOTLINE MEMBER BENEFITS:

• Bottom-line savings with donations of plastic loosefill.

• Potential new customers come to your store.

• Advertisement of your business to local callers 24 hours a day.

• Unique public relations for serving as a local recycling site.

• Goodwill with shoppers for offering this community service.

Financial tips for monthly bills

Today's tip is two fold. One, if you are reading this, you are online. This means you are also able to receive all your bills that way. We highly recommend receiving and paying bills online, and opting out of paper billing for a few reasons, including the environment, from both a paper perspective and the delivery perspective. Also for the fact that each company will keep your records. Paperwork is the bane of my existence and anything I can do to reduce the amount of paper I have to move around from location to location in my house is welcome.

Our most important tip, one that we have done nearly every January, once we dig out from our end of the year bills and before we start our taxes is to assess every monthly bill you have and see where we can cut expenses. Every January, I go through all our files and shred any documents over a year old, unless they are necessary. (I look forward to the day there isn't a single piece of paper to shred... ahh one can dream, right?) This gives me a chance to assess where we may be able to reduce monthly costs on cell phones, utilities, credit cards, cable, anything we pay on a regular basis. Many times reducing a bill is as simple as a phone call.

Below I have included our bill for quarterly garbage collection for the past year, copied it from our online statements. I received an offer from a competitor that was significantly lower, so I called to renegotiate or cancel service to change to their competitor. They agreed to match the competitor's rates.

You will notice that our bill at the end of 2010 was nearly twice what it is currently. I called in January, and thought it was not rectified by the next billing cycle, after another phone call, they credited my account (not as much as I thought they should, but still a credit) then my bill has been half what it was for a year now. Understand that no company will lower your rates just to be nice. You must ask. If they can charge you more, naturally they will.

I also have any bill I can automatically charged to my credit card that offers a rebate. The key to that is paying the credit card in full or the interest charges far exceed the amount of the rebate.

To recap today's tip: Don't be afraid to negotiate your bills. Admittedly, it took several phone calls and probably 2 total hours of time either on hold or a phone call. My time is worth the savings of about $120/annually. You can also negotiate with your cable and cell company. While your heating, water and electric bills may not be negotiable, there are ways to reduce those which will we have addressed in the past and will revisit in the future.

Date Account Description More Info Action 09/15/2012 Amount: $46.04, Due: 10/05/2012 Payments 06/15/2012 Amount: $45.90, Due: 07/05/2012 Payments 03/15/2012 Amount: $45.69, Due: 04/04/2012 Payments 12/15/2011 Amount: $45.61, Due: 01/04/2012 Payments 09/20/2011 I Amount: $15.98, Due: 10/10/2011 Payments 08/15/2011 Amount: -$12.15, Due: 09/04/2011 04/15/2011 Amount: $87.45, Due: 05/05/2011 Payments 12/28/2010 Amount: $83.24, Due: 01/17/2011 Payments