Let’s go green on Christmas

Christmas festivities are nearing. Shopping spree is in full swing everywhere. It is good to enjoy, to give gifts to our loved ones, to enlighten hour homes and to chill out. But our pleasure at the cost of someone’s sorrow can never be a right way of living. The core spirit of our every religious ritual is to be happy and let others stay happy too. So on this Christmas let’s make a pledge to go green and remain so forever.

Whatever we do we aim to please a super human being. Some people call it God, some other say it Allah and some other name it Bhagwan. Name is different but the real being is the same. The whole system of this cosmos works under a system that is called Nature. So let’s make our mother nature happy on this day of joys and pleasures.

There are several ways to go green on Christmas. We don’t have to be so much serious while doing so. Nor we have to take a note book to act upon a list of pledges. It’s just a matter of our will. If we really want to enjoy keeping all others including our Mother Nature joyous so there are small tips we can follow them and go green without deferring any of our favorite festive.

We replace most of our household items on Christmas. It is good to renew our home stuff but a little care can make this act go green. Just decide

1.       What you must discard this year.

2.       What you should replace with new one

3.       What you can make work for another year

4.       What is quite new and no need to replace

What you must discard this year

So the above point no 1 is quite valid. If something is quite out of order, obsolete or does not function properly you must discard it. However, while doing so you can also go green. If there is an NGO around you that buys the obsolete items and send them to poor countries for reuse don’t think for a minute and contact that NGO to dispose off your obsolete household items. Otherwise you can sell your scrap item to a recycling factory if it is recyclable.  

Moreover, while buying the new one just take care of the amount of emissions it make while working. This you should do especially when you are buying an electronics item. For example buy an emission (CFC) free refrigerator because CFC hurts the ozone layer. Secondly also see how much electricity that gadget consume and select the one that consume minimum power. In this way we can play our role to make fossil fuel burn less and produce little less energy. Burning of fossil fuel creates poisonous gases in atmosphere and directly hits our lungs.

But remember you have to take care of both the above points in addition to the quality of the item. You must be satisfied with the quality of the gadget first and after that examine the green aspect of the item you want to buy.

What you should replace with the new one

This is not compulsory. If you can afford you should replace it. But again examine the intensity of your need to replace it. If you belong to a society where a replaceable item receives a weird look you should not hesitate to sell it out and buy the new one. However, if you live in a less-status-cautious community you should keep using that item as long as you can. Remember Christmas is an occasion to enjoy. You can enjoy by lot of other activities. Just renewing the household items may be a part of it but it is not the entire source of the happiness.

What you can make work for another year

This is the most crucial question. For its answer you must see your affordability and norms of the society where you live. If it is looked down upon by others to make the things work by hook or crook, you should plan to replace it. However, if there is no such case and you just assume that if you do so people would laugh at you, you need to review your assumption. Yes an item which can make you a laughing stock in your community should be replaced with the new one. Or at least you should renovate it to make it work for another year. In this way you would discard less and contribute less in generating scrap that ultimately adds load on solid waste.

What is quite new and no need to replace it

Here also you should tell others that you have a few household items that are new and you are not replacing them on this Christmas. In this way you would motivate others to follow your suite. As a result you may develop a trend to proudly declare if you don’t need to replace all the household items this year.

You have the right to ask here that the reason of shopping spree on Christmas is unbelievable discounts. It is fine but remember Christmas comes every year. So higher discount does not mean you must buy the items of discounted prices this year. If you can make the items work for some more years you would be getting full discount of their prices. No doubt going green calls for little sacrifice but here its demand is not to avoid consumption. It simply wants us to consume rationally. It means consume if we really need and don’t let social trends regulate your needs. You must regulate your own needs to go green and protect our environment from extra waste of our discarded items.

Apart from above we can also go green on this Christmas by taking care in our following actions:

1.  To wrap the Christmas gifts buy the recycled paper; wrap your gifts skillfully to use minimum paper
2. Do make lot of lighting but as much as it looks an expression of joy but don’t go crazy in doing this
3. Use recycled Christmas cards and promote its use in your surroundings
4. Cook food as much as you can eat and plan to use the refuse stuff in coming days
5.  Instead of plastic tree buy a real Christmas tree because plastic tree becomes obsolete and you have to dump it with your civic waste. But a plastic material is not bio-degradable and keep on hurting the soil features.