It is December – a time of festivities and joy all around the world. Across the vast reaches of our planet, 7 billion of us come together and rejoice in a time of happiness and peace. A time representing pure joy, we rejoice, delight and celebrate in these times. However, sometimes these we have to be environmentally conscious in our festivals. We must create ?green festivals? – festivals which capture the essence of our culture but are also ecologically friendly.

So, whether it be Christmas or any other holiday, in the next set of articles we will try to discuss some ideas to incorporate environmental conservation into our celebrations. In this article, we will be looking at a set of very simple but effective ideas in order to make our festivals more ?green?.

1.       Often times in our festivals we make use of led lights to decorate our homes. This is a very special tradition and there are festivals all over the world which make use of light to symbolise hope and joy. However, we can take simple steps to still use our lights and try to be environmentally friendly as well. Firstly, we can make use of energy saving light series – lights which are energy saving can save a lot of energy as well as save us money in our energy bill. So, they are a great investment. They are readily available and benefit us and the environment. Furthermore, we can limit the hours we leave our decoration lights on. If we leave the lights on from dusk to the time we go to sleep, then we can reduce the energy wasted at times when no one will be seeing the lights anyway.

2.       At Christmastime it is also a tradition to put up Christmas trees. There are two types of Christmas trees – synthetic ?fake? trees and real trees which are cut down.  It may seem as if the correct decision would be to avoid trees which are cut down. However, synthetic trees can often pose the same if not higher degree of risk to the environment then the natural trees. Natural trees which are available for sale in large cities are often times grown in very small areas just for the purpose of Christmas and are replanted for the next Christmas. So, the natural forest is seldom disturbed. Meanwhile, synthetic trees often contain very harmful chemicals and their manufacturing process may have posed a significant risk to the environment. Hence, making the choice of which type of tree to have is very important.

3.       Often times the decorations for our homes during these times are not very environmentally friendly. Decorations are often made with harmful dyes and plastic which are not produced using environmentally friendly practices. Hence, it may be a good idea to cut down on the large number of decorations we put up around the house.

4.       Lastly, in times of festivities we often exchange gifts with our family and friends. I believe that it is important to give meaningful gifts that people will find useful, because if the person likes the gift and uses it, then it will not be thrown out but rather used to the maximum. Often times, if one does not find a gift useful then it is thrown out or sits unused until it is eventually disposed of. We can avoid this by giving meaningful gifts.  

This has been some ideas to create greener holidays and enjoy our respective festivities in a more eco-friendly manner. If you have any more ideas to contribute to this or would like to comment on any of the above ideas, I would really appreciate if you did so! 

Happy Holidays!

Nitish Bhatt