The holiday season is quickly approaching, and while we might all celebrate differently, many of us are purchasing gifts for loved ones over the next few months. Before you start adding items to your shopping cart, here are some facts to consider about the environmental impact of holiday shopping.    

Intentional sourcing  

Shopping online can be a simple click for consumers, but it also adds large transporting emissions along with waste generated by boxes, bubble wrap, or other packaging materials. Manufacturing and transporting new items from across the nation requires high amounts of energy and natural resources. This export cost affects not only your wallet, but also our environmental impact.  Alternatively, thrifting gifts is a loving way to repurpose or recycle materials others no longer need. Combining a reusable dish with your favorite dessert, a knitted scarf, or handwritten letter are great low-cost, low environmental impact items to gift. Cherishing still-useful items and bringing them into a new home helps decrease our waste and increase intentional sourcing.   

Mindful materials  

Walking down the toy isle, you may be surprised to learn 90% of toys are produced from plastic. Most toys are designed for short term use, but as consumers, we can intentionally purchase toys of materials that are made with longevity, can be repaired, or built to be recycled at end of their life. Nearly 80% of all toys end up in landfills, incinerators, or the ocean. In a single year, $1 billion worth of plush toys were purchased in America. However, there is a growing demand for wooden toys, which offer better longevity and can be produced from wood waste. Wood waste involves cutting trees and branches, collecting suitable parts for production, drying, storing, and manufacturing toys for sale. Pieces of wood with high density are made for objects that experience higher impact during their use. Less dense wood can be made into items such as board game pieces, puzzles, or other low impact objects. Gifting wooden toys compared to plastic toys reduces the amount of plastic in our landfills and can provide opportunities for kids to be more creative in their play.    

Wrapping the gift  

Once you’ve found the perfect gift, how you wrap it also matters. Wrapping paper with any foil or glitter is not able to be recycled, and it is estimated that 1 kilogram of wrapping paper can cost up to 3.5 kilograms of carbon emissions during production. More environmentally friendly ways to wrap your gifts would be with brown paper or newspaper. The best option is to utilize reusable gift boxes or cloth wraps. These can be used repeatedly for years to come.    

Our natural resources are not infinite, and our landfills are filling up. Our shopping habits greatly impact our natural resources and energy consumption. With holidays around the corner, now is a wonderful time to alter habits and see how you can be more environmentally intentional about your holiday gifts.