• If you received gifts in regular wrapping paper, save it and use it to pad around your ornaments and decorations when you put them away.  They make great cushioning paper.  Read about wrapping paper from earth911 who says: “if every American family wrapped just three presents in reused materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.” If you were careful when opening gifts, you may be able to reuse the wrapping paper for gifts next year.  My father and I wrapped all of our gifts in leftover tissue paper and plain cream colored packaging paper this year.  We also use newspaper which we can then use to start fires with in our woodstove over the winter.
• Of course everyone knows to save your gift bags and reuse them next year.  You can also use them to bag up extra decorations as needed.
• Some places will actually recycle your christmas tree and turn it into mulch.  In Huntsville Alabama there is a Botanical Garden that will do this if you drop the tree off.  Do some research and see who else in your area might be providing this same service.
• Re-gift unwanted gifts. If you feel bad about asking for the receipt to return a gift, and if your gifters don’t have the for-sight to provide you with the receipt just in case, then re-gift the item.  I love regifting, so long as I’m giving it to someone I know will appreciate it.
• In my article about how to reduce paper waste this Christmas, I mentioned that you can donate your christmas cards to St. Jude’s Children’s Ranch to be recycled into new cards.  Make-stuff.com also provides a list of ways you can creatively reuse your christmas cards as well.

What other creative ways do you make your post-holiday clean-up more eco-friendly?

Following suite of my article Greening up Christmas: Paper Waste, I figured it’d be fun to evaluate other methods to make Christmas greener this year.

Lets take a look at gifts.

• Home-made gifts are always the way to go for Christmas. I make a mean cherry brownie with home-made cherry chocolate ganache. I’ve seen other people knit scarves, make pendants, whatever you can put together with love is a great gift idea.
• Donate your time. Are you pretty handy with a skill? A cousin of mine donated his time to rework some of our electrical work in our old house a few years back. Another person I know donated a free tarot reading as a gift. I could certainly donate a web design or two to a friend who I know needed one.
• Donate to charity in a friends name. Always a popular choice, you could always donate to a charity fund in your friends name. My family has a lot of diabetes, so donating to the diabetes fund would be especially touching for them.
• Regift. I actually like the concept of regifting. I mean sometimes you just get a gift that you don’t like or wouldn’t use. Why not put it to good use and give it to someone would could appreciate it?
• Give a gift of time. A day at the spa, or a day at the golf course are excellent eco-friendly gifts as well. Consider them like gift certificates of time to your loved one.
• Giftcards. Though not a very personal gift, Giftcards help prevent unwanted gifts that might end up being thrown away or cluttering up someones house.

Also check out some of Care2’s Consumer-less gift ideas.

“Under the Fed’s new rule, which will take effect July 1, banks will be required to notify new and existing customers of their overdraft services and give customers the option of being covered. If customers don’t “opt in,” any debit or ATM transactions that overdraw their accounts will be denied, Fed officials said.”

However checks and regular bill payments are not covered by this rule, simply because the majority of people would rather overdraft than bounce a check or a bill (like rent) not get paid. Which makes sense to me, and is probably for the best.

“Many consumers do want checks and regular electronic bill payments to be covered in the event of an overdraft, Fed officials said. As a result, those transactions aren’t covered by the rule.”

Why this has taken so long to come into effect is boggling, but at least it’s finally happening.

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Paper waste is abundant at Christmas time, from holiday cards to wrapping paper.  In the United States an additional 5 million tons of waste is generated during the holidays.

Just think of how much waste is produced by the Christmas Card alone.  Not only are you producing the paper waste of the card itself, but the fuel to send it where it needs to go.  In the UK, over 1 billion Christmas Cards end up in landfills, and 1.9 billion by Americans.   One tree is needed to make up 3,000 cards.  That’s a ton of waste!

Wrapping paper is probably one of the most wasteful things we use during the holidays.  A glorified decorative piece of paper with its inks and dyes, wrapped around a gift for only a few days before being torn off and thrown away.  The paper itself doesn’t burn well because of the inks and dyes, and the burning of those inks and dyes releases harmful chemicals anyway. 4 million tons of wrapping paper and shopping bags are thrown away each holiday season.

How can we reduce our paper waste during the holidays?

Gift Paper:

• A few times I used newspaper we had lying around the house, generally for everyday gifts.
• I’ve wrapped gifts in a nice piece of fabric I had lying around, tyed with a nice piece of string or bow that I also had.  If the receiver does not wish to keep the fabric, I ask for it back to be used again.
• I’ve wrapped gifts in paper bags from the grocery store, which are a perfect canvas for my own custom decorations should I choose to.  An example could be taking a piece of apple or a leaf and painting one side to create your own rustic stamp on the paper.  Personally I think the paper bags look nice and traditional, especially when wrapped with bailing twine.
• Buy recycled wrapping paper with eco-friendly ink.

Greeting Cards:

• Obviously sending no card at all is the best way to reduce waste, but is a hard and undesirable step for some.
• Some like to make their own cards from materials around their house, which is a lovely way to send a custom greeting to a loved one.
• You can also recycle old cards, or cards you have received by cutting off the front and attaching it to another piece of (recycled) paper to resend.  But some view this method as tacky.
• Send an e-greeting to family and friends.  Most people have access to the internet these days, which means most people will have an email account.  Send them an e-greeting instead where you can personalize a message within the card.  Not only does it help save the environment, it saves your wallet too, since these are generally free.
• Buy recycled gift cards with eco-friendly ink.  If you’re going to waste money on cards anyway, may as well put forth the money for nice recycled ones.

Recycling Holiday Waste:

• As mentioned above, you could reuse your own cards to send out each year.
• St. Jude’s Ranch for Children is a nonprofit that uses donated greeting cards to create new card sets.  The proceeds from this go to help abused children.  What a great way to recycle your old greeting cards.
• Be careful when opening gifts wrapped in paper, and see if you can’t reuse that paper again in the future.
• Save the holiday bag you receive and reuse them to gift next year.
• Reuse wrapping paper, envelopes, and/or cards to create your own gift tags.  I’ve used old wrapping paper for gift tags for years.  Simply cut a rectangle and fold it in half.  Write your gift tag in the center and tape to your gift

Other Articles around the Web

Nature Moms gives a big list of eco-candy, gift, and costume ideas.

Kiwi Magazine talks about eco-friendly halloween crafts.

Inhabitots discusses eco-friendly costume ideas and where to purchase.

I was having a conversation with co-workers yesterday on the gradual disappearance of checks. For most people, whipping out a credit/debit card is easier and faster. Personally I don’t think I’ve written a check in almost 2 years because I use ING and they’ll first attempt to send the transaction electronically -then- they’ll mail a check for me. Gotta love ING.

There are a couple different things I’ve done over the last few years to prevent so much paper waste from my personal finance sundries. Here are a few ideas:

Ways to Green up your Finances

• Switch to a bank that promotes electronic transactions over paper ones, like ING Direct.
• Opt out of receiving paper statements. If your financial institution provides pdf copies, save those to your computer instead.
• Consider a bio-degradable credit card. In December of 2008, Discover launched a bio-degradable credit card that breaks down when exposed to microorganisms, but was hearty enough to stand up to your wallet.  The article goes on to say
  

  “there were nearly 1.5 billion credit cards in use in the U.S. A stack of all those credit cards would reach more than 70 miles into space — and be almost as tall as 13 Mount Everests. If this number of credit cards were thrown away every three years, the stack of credit cards would reach almost 43 Everests high after a decade.”

• Or consider a green credit card that promotes reducing your carbon foot-print and funds renewable energy.  Alternatively you could select one that donates to certain charity funds.
• If you must send checks, buy checks made from recycled paper with eco-friendly inks. If your financial institution doesn’t offer either, I’d definitely ask them why.
• Get rid of the check register and track your finances with a digital finance tool such as Mint.com. Not only is it easier, but you can receive bill reminders and view reports of your spending and saving habits.
• Invest in Green stocks as noted by Mint.com and Treehugger.
• Get direct deposit for your paycheck -and- your tax refund. Not only do you get the money faster, but you’re not wasting paper each week.

What other ways can you think of to green our personal finance?

Don’t forget to Tip this article.

These days there is a lot of talk about chemicals released in plastic when heated and all of the plastic in the ocean, so it’s much less desirable for parties promoting plastic storage these days.  What to do instead?

In steps in Green Cleaning Parties.

And excerpt from their website:

A green cleaning party is a fun event where you and your friends learn how to make non-toxic cleaners from common ingredients like vinegar, baking soda and essential oils.

Gather up your jars, they’ll show you how to label and mix your own cleaners.  They even have a kit so you can host your own party and help friends and family rid their homes of toxic chemicals and educate them on environmentally safe choices instead.

A sample recipe from their site:

All-Purpose Cleaner
suggested uses: hard surfaces like countertops and kitchen floors, windows and mirrors

2 cups white distilled vinegar
2 cups water
20-30 or more drops of essential oil (optional)

Tip: Warming in microwave until barely hot will boost cleaning power for tough jobs. Only microwave in a glass container.

Don’t forget to check out some of the other social circle party ideas, such as the Safe Cosmetics Party, Healthy Home Party, etc, courtesy of Activistas.

It includes:

• AC Power
• Car Charger
• USB Charger
• Built-in Lithium Battery that can be charged with solar power
• And supports multi-voltage output so it can charge most phones

The price wasn’t bad at all either, for only $32.

I like the fact that this can be used for multiple phones, so if I ever need to use it as well, I can.  I like that it can use various resources to charge with, so I don’t have 3 separate chargers (meaning less plastic waste) and he and I can share this one.

One of the best things about winter is waking up on a chilly morning under a bed of flannel sheets and a down blanket, and curling up with a cup of hot chocolate.  Growing up that was usually one of the larger brands like Swiss Miss, but below are a few organic, fair-trade certified brands that you might be interested in trying.

Lake Champlain – A Vermont based company.

Dagoba - Keep in mind that Dagoba has been bought out by Hershey when purchasing.

Equal Exchange

Trader Joe’s Conacado Organic Fair Trade Cocoa – Apparently loved by many, but I have not tried it myself.

Make your own

An alternative to purchasing organic hot chocolate, is to make your own with organic ingredients.  Try a few of these recipes (personally I am partial to actual chocolate instead of powder, but I’m providing one of each):

Parisan Warm Chocolate:

Ingredients:

* 1 cup whole milk
* 1/3 heavy cream
* 1/4 cup sugar
* 5 oz semisweet chocolate, chopped

Preparation:
Simmer the milk, cream and sugar together until just boiling. Stir in the chocolate until melted. Don’t let it boil. Serve warm in demitasse cups.

Creamy Hot Chocolate:

Ingredients:

* 1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
* 3/4 cup white sugar
* 1 pinch salt
* 1/3 cup boiling water
* 3 1/2 cups milk
* 3/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
* 1/2 cup half-and-half cream

Preparation
Combine the cocoa, sugar and pinch of salt in a saucepan. Blend in the boiling water. Bring this mixture to an easy boil while you stir. Simmer and stir for about 2 minutes. Watch that it doesn’t scorch. Stir in 3 1/2 cups of milk and heat until very hot, but do not boil! Remove from heat and add vanilla. Divide between 4 mugs. Add the cream to the mugs of cocoa to cool it to drinking temperature.

Personal Tip: Try adding a chai teabag (I used Stacks in the past) to the hot chocolate mix.  You’ll swear it tastes like Christmas.

Here is an excerpt:

In addition to unexpected expenses, how about things you know are going to happen eventually? If you knew it was something that was going to happen, there’s no excuse not to prepare for it.

Right now my mustang is still on the original tires I bought it with in 2006. I’m going to need new tires relatively soon, so I need to figure out how much 4 new tires cost, and how much I can spare each month to put away for them. That way I’ll know my timeline, and I’ll be prepared, and I’m not dipping into my emergency savings because lets face it, this was not an emergency.

Stop by and read The Value of Planning.