5 Eco-Friendly Ways to Save Money This Christmas

1. Make Your Own Decorations

Making Christmas decorations is great fun for kids and adults alike, and is a brilliant exercise in family bonding during the holiday season.

Home-made decorations are extra special because there’s more meaning to them than shop bought tinsel and stars.

For maximum eco-friendliness, keep the decorations for future Christmases.

That way, there will always be a story to tell each year when you get them out and remember your streak of Yuletide creativity.

Use old packaging for craft materials.

My wife makes beautiful Christmas crackers using cardboard rolls from toilet paper.

Other ideas include using your children’s artwork as giftwrap, and recycling old Christmas cards by cutting out the cover picture to make gift-taps.

For more inspirations, visit the eco-friendly Christmas crafts page at Eco Child’s Play.

2. Give e-Cards

E-cards are Christmas cards sent online via e-mail instead of through the post.

Using e-cards saves money on postage costs, as well as reducing the carbon footprint of sending hundreds of paper cards across the country.

E-cards are available for free download from many websites.

You can also make your own e-cards using digital photographs and free image editing software.

This year, I made mine using PhotoFiltre, who have a tutorial for card making on their website.

3. Go Home-Made on the Food

Christmas cake, Yorkshire puddings, roast potatoes, even pre-sliced carrots - it’s amazing what you can find ready made in the shops these days.

To save money and rediscover your inner-chef , try making Christmas dinner from scratch this year.

Not only is this wonderfully satisfying, it also cuts back on supermarket packaging going into landfill.

And there’s nothing quite like homemade Yorkshire puds.

4. Turn off the TV (& Video Games)

Ah, Christmas Television. Switching on the Doctor Who Christmas special works wonders when you’re trying to avoid your family’s annual rendition of world war three, or if you’re simply trying to escape awkward conversation with 83-year-old Aunt Agnes.

Take a risk this Christmas. Turn the TV off, get out a classic family board game, start bonding with those people you call family, and find out if Aunt Agnes has any interesting stories to tell.

You’ll relearn what Christmas is all about, save money on your energy bill, and reduce your carbon emissions.

How about peeling the kids away from computer games too?

As small and innocent as the games themselves seem in terms of carbon footprint, video games consoles are a huge energy hog.

5. Buy Less Stuff

This last tip is the simplest, the most effective, the most eco-friendly, and the most difficult.

Christmas and consumerism have become so intimately intertwined that we struggle to imagine Christmas without masses of presents.

If buying nothing at all for Christmas seems beyond imagining, here are some tips to wean you off the gift shopping addiction:

Buy second hand.
This is especially eco-friendly for items that will only be used a few times, such as CDs and books.

Cheap second hand books and CDs are easily found online as sites such as eBay and Amazon.

Do a secret Santa.
Instead of everyone at your workplace/in your family buying a present for everyone else, organise a secret Santa where each person gets one present from everybody.

Ask for presents you need.
Surprise presents are great, but have you ever used that penguin-shaped glow-in-the-dark ice-cream scoop?

Make the most of Christmas by asking for gifts you need, rather than getting surprises which will mostly end up in the dustbin after one or two uses.