Top Tips for a low Carbon Christmas 2

Christmas is getting closer – are you ready? And will it a low carbon Christmas?

Here are a few top tips to help you cut your carbon and your costs this Christmas…

1) Rather than buying rolls and rolls of wrapping paper, you could make your own by decorating newspaper, or wrap your presents in pretty pieces of fabric that can be reused again and again.

2) If you are buying Christmas cards or wrapping paper – then buy recycled paper and ideally look to support a charity. Many charities offer lovely Christmas cards and paper with profits going to fund their work.

3) Big bowls of nuts are synonymous with a tradition Christmas so make sure you include some fair-trade Brazil nuts. Eating Brazil nuts from the Amazon gives people a sustainable income and helps to preserve the forest, soaking up even more carbon from the atmosphere!

4) When you are shopping for Christmas lunch look locally produced meat and vegetables. Transporting food long distances from overseas or even just from the other end of the UK produces many tonnes of CO2 every day, so check the labels and ask the shopkeeper where the food was produced.

5) After Christmas lunch, if you’re visiting family and friends locally why not suggest that you all walk, rather than take the car. It might even help to work up an appetite for the mince pies at teatime, as well as reduce carbon emissions from using petrol.

For more Low Carbon Christmas Tips tune into Passion for the Planet and check out next Tuesday’s blog, right here!

Happiness starts at work.

So we’ve all heard the expression ‘happiness starts at home’. However, for a lot of people most of their waking lives are actually spent outside the home and in the office. So why then, don’t we make as much effort to improve our lives, and environmental efforts at work?

I know many people who spend hours cooking delicious organic dishes for dinner, are oh so sustainable on the weekends - recycling almost everything, composting food waste and tea bags, re-using yoghurt pots for labeling pot plants, walking their kids to the park saving an unnecessary car journey, and many other fantastic ways to be green.

But then during the week they end up having a supermarket BLT for lunch (or at best a packaged salad which probably contains more salt than it’s equivalent in sea water), produce tonnes of administrative waste that ends up in landfills rather than being recycled, have the company spend money on expensive paper and packaging while the offices pay electricity bills for vending machines that are filled with chocolate and crisps. Remember, even if you are a carnivore with a sweet tooth with no interest in reducing your carbon footprint – the money alone that’s being wasted here could be coming straight out of your pay cheque!

So what can you do about the harm being done environmentally, to your health and to your pocket?


Here’s a list of things you as an individual can change:

• Next to the printer have a pile of clean paper and scrap paper – print on the back of the scrap paper if it’s for internal use
• Have a stationary box for stationary you get given free at events. Okay – so I accept this might not be enough to supply your whole office but it will certainly cut down annual spending and reduce waste
• Re-use jiffy bags when you get sent a package. We keep ours in a filing cabinet drawer and have the right size bag for virtually anything we want to send out
• Re-use the piece of paper in between business cards that the printers use to stop them smudging and don’t throw away out-of-date business cards – both can be used instead of post-it notes
• Bring a homemade vegetarian lunch in – that extra vegetarian meal per day will make all the difference to your carbon footprint, be cheaper and hopefully improve your health [for some recipes see Munch Less Meat]
• If you drive to work, take public transport once a week. Friday is often a good day to do this as it also means you can have a sneaky drink on the way home!
• Don’t throw yesterdays water down the drain (kettle or bottled) – water the plants in the office instead when you go to refill
• Walk rather than taking the lift which will also have positive health implications
• Don’t overfill the kettle you only need to put in it what will be used when making everyone some tea
• Bring in chocolates / biscuits you receive for everyone to share – so technically this isn’t any more environmentally friendly but it’s a nice gesture which will cheer everyone up around you, save your waistline and in turn cut down the nations health bills (I could go on about the importance healthy eating habits at work here but I won’t…)

And here are some things that you can suggest that your office changes:

• Ask them to buy stationery only from sustainable office suppliers [such as The Green Stationery Company] and always choose recycled paper.
• Have recycling for paper, cardboard, bottles, cans, etc (label one pile as ‘to be shredded’ if you’re worried about confidential information being passed on)
• Suggest that staff bring in their own bottle to use for water rather than using polystyrene or plastic cups next to a water machine. For clients offer them a glass of water that you can wash up (this also looks smarter)
• If you have a canteen suggest they offer at least two nutritionally balanced vegetarian options
• Ask the offices to take out vending machines and replace them with better cooking facilities. If people want chocolate they can always bring it in rather than your offices paying for the electricity that a vending machine uses and adding to their carbon footprint

Is fashion really rubbish?

It’s amazing what you can make out of rubbish!

I recently MC’d a fashion show that was all about clothes made from waste materials. It was a fascinating display of what can be done if you are willing to re-use and recycle.

The show was called Wear Not Waste and it was presented by Under Croydon as part of the Croydon Fashion Festival.

Some of the clothes were made from material off-cuts sewn together to make a complete item, others were crafted using plastic bags (the Umpalumpa Bin Dress designed by Lauren Adams and Keyya Attard) or old venetian blinds (the Zebra dress designed by Pamela Nyakato Musana and Raihana Campbell). One was even made from a dozen copies of The Financial Times (designed by Priscilla Enid Agoye).

Other dresses took their inspiration from the rain forests or our obsession with plastic surgery.

The head designer this year was Master Furse whose clever creations can be seen each weekend at Spitalfields market.

Even if you don’t think you have what it takes to create a dress out of plastic bags or venetian blinds, or perhaps even if you could you’re not brave enough to wear it, then take inspiration from some of the designers that updated old items to give them a fresh new fashion look; from gathering up a skirt and ballooning it (by Jessica Rotheram) to adding ribbons and bows (Clara Irving-Mayes) to dying your old faded linen dress and stitching on some sexy lace trim (by Gabriella Lamorella). Anything is possible!

Over a million tonnes of clothes end up in UK dustbins every year – most of these could be re-used by donating them to hostels or charity shops, or they could be revamped as was so beautifully demonstrated at the fashion show in Croydon or they could be recycled and turned into cleaning cloths and other items.

So, before you throw that old jacket out, take a moment to think if the dustbin really is the right place for it. Or better still – before you buy yet another new fashion piece, ask yourself if you might have something even better just waiting, in your wardrobe, for that second chance to shine.

Remember - “new” is just so yesterday – and yesterday with trimmings is just so “right now”.