Anna Shepard and Harriet Addison
The man, the films, those blondes. Free DVD collection starting this Sunday
1. Either re-plant your tree for next year, or recycle it -- about seven million Christmas trees are grown in the UK each year, but only one in six is recycled.
2. Don’t add to landfill -- give “to do” presents such as opera tickets, gallery membership or spa weekends.
3. Save wrapping paper and either re-use it or make present tags for next year.
4. Make a list of ten green resolutions you’d like to achieve next year, from getting a compost bin to taking a holiday in the UK instead of flying abroad.
5. The average family will throw away about a third of the festive food they purchase. Plan carefully, with recyclable packaging only, compost where possible, and be inventive with leftovers.
6. Turn off your fairy lights at night, or put them on a timer – if everyone turns their fairy lights off every night it will save £5.5 million in electricity.
7. Visit farmer’s markets and food fairs, and have a locally sourced, eco-friendly Christmas dinner, avoiding supermarkets where possible. Go for traditional seasonal British produce -- sprouts, carrots, potatoes and local meat and cheeses.
8. Deck the halls with boughs of real holly instead of buying decorations.
9. Volunteer (www.crisis.org.uk or www.ageconcern.org) and make someone else’s Christmas a little happier by offering companionship to the homeless and the elderly.
10. Take your own re-usable shopping bag with you when you do your Christmas shopping and try not to buy overpacked gifts. Around 125,000 tonnes of plastic packaging are thrown away over Christmas.
11. After Christmas, collect up all of the cards you have received and hand them into Tesco, M&S or WHSmith stores by January 31. They will then be recycled by The Woodland Trust.
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Haha! W.H Langeman quite clearly feels threatened considering his country is one of the less green countries in the world. Has it occured to him that maybe the US need to do something - And may I add that if The Guardian is so rubbish why is he reading it and adding his uneducated views on here.
N. Thomas, London,
20 - Lighten up W H Langeman. The USA is not entirely guilt-free.
Claudia, London, UK
12- Reduce your population to reasonable levels as in the U.S.
13- Increase your nations's material and intellectual productivity so that it is not a drag on others.
14- Recreate each nation's natural percentage of forestation.
15- Stop staying in elaborate resorts which you have flown to in half full A380's so that you can attend conferences which produce excessive amounts of hot air.
16- Stop selling the U.S. anti-green high performance luxury automobiles and instead insist on selling us only things like smart cars.
17- Stop asking for the U.S. military to send 2,000 carbon spewing military jets to bail you out in places like Kosovo and Bosnia and stop asking for the use of our fleet to rescue and aid Tsunami victims.
18- By all means stop cutting down trees to publish rubbish like the Guardian.
19- Invent your own internet, PC's, cell phones and computer operating systems so you too can add 25% to the global GDP in a green way...
W.H. Langeman, Tucson, USA, AZ