Keep your gift-giving green this holiday season

1: Think about how your packages travel

There are so many options for choosing gifts—from ordering online for quick, easy delivery to your door, to in-store shopping where you can peruse at leisure. But what is the greenest option to consider for this holiday season? According to a study that examined the carbon footprint of in-store, online delivery from local stores and online-only retailers: there were a few factors to consider.

Some tips from the lead author were shared in HuffPost. Here’s a quick guide to help you think about which gift-giving options tend to be greenest:

Worst: Avoid buying from retailers who are online-only and requesting overnight shipping—these types of purchases tend to use more packaging and transportation to get shipments out as soon as possible.

Good: If you must buy online-only, try to include more items in one purchase rather than multiple orders with fewer items which means more trips overall and more packaging. Or if you want to go in-store, combine your errand to the store with another planned travel, like on your way home from work to save a roundtrip to the store.

Better: Order items online from a traditional store or retailer. Where cars are primarily used for the purpose of shopping, like in the U.S., this is the greener choice because goods are being delivered and other people’s orders add up to fewer miles traveled than if each customer had driven to the store and back.

Best: Find nearby, local stores that you can walk or bike to secure gifts.

2: Choose gifts that don't leave waste

The National Environmental Education Foundation (NEEF) found that during the holiday season, Americans produce 25% more trash than they do during the rest of the year, with $11 billion dollars' worth of that being packaging materials.

To reduce the amount of waste your gifts may be creating, try picking out presents that can’t be wrapped up or thrown away—like services or experiences. And if you absolutely need to stick with something you can hand directly to friends and family, you can always try finding zero waste gift alternatives that have long lifespans or are biodegradable. Need inspiration? Check out Shedd’s Holiday Gift Guide, or consider any of the following gifts for a greener holiday:

• Memberships to local cultural institutions like museums, zoos, or aquariums
• Digital subscriptions to magazines or newspapers
• Season tickets to amusement parks or sporting events
• Native plants for the gardeners in your life to cultivate and enjoy
• Homemade treats and goods like scarves, hats and blankets
• Lessons or classes to develop a new skillset or grow their talents—from cooking to instruments, photography or workouts and everything in between

If you’ve already picked out your presents, don’t worry—you can still reduce your carbon footprint by choosing environmentally conscious ways to buy and wrap your gifts.

3: Keep your gift-wrapping environmentally friendly

The effects behind traditional wrapping paper aren’t pretty. Wrapping paper is often covered in glitter, which is made up of microplastics that can be mistaken as food by fishes, birds and other animals, polluting the planet and staying here for hundreds of years, according to experts interviewed by CBC News. Similarly, many of the dyes used to color wrapping paper are so harsh that the material can no longer be recycled. But even when they aren’t covered in sparkles and harsh dyes, most of the products we wrap our presents with are used once, torn up and thrown away, which contributes to the hefty amount of waste the holiday season rings in.

To achieve the same effect without waste, try decorating your packages with reusable materials like scarves, bandanas, simple paper, boxes that gifts were delivered in and even mason jars. All of these household items can be sustainably decorated and dressed up into chic presents to share and be reused by the recipient to reduce waste.

Or, if you’re on the receiving end of the gift-giving, hold onto any gift bags, ribbons or wrapping paper that come your way and try reusing them. Repurposing disposable materials like this ensures it doesn’t end up in landfills after one use and gives you the opportunity to see what sort of creative ways you can come up with to put them to use!

—Basia Urban, public relations intern at Shedd Aquarium