We all generate waste. The peel from your banana at breakfast, the commute to the office, the little treat to get you through the afternoon, even dental floss which takes 80 years to degrade. There’s no way to avoid it and no one can escape the whirlpool of plastic packaging and overconsumption.
During the holiday season, it seems our normal amount of waste skyrockets. But changing our mindsets during the “most wonderful time of the year,” with everything else we have going on, can be incredibly difficult.
It seems everyone has fallen into this idea of what the holidays look like. Challenging this perception, I set out to find a different way of thinking and find someone to help me through the transition.
Carolyn Kury de Castillo does community engagement work with Green Calgary. She sat down to have a conversation about how to make a conscious effort to change out bad holiday season etiquette and have some creative fun along the way.
Inspired by de Castillo, I have taken it upon myself to change my habits around the holiday season by deciding to thrift and make or bake all of my Christmas gifts this year. Keep an eye on the Calgary Journal’s TikTok and my personal instagram to see how I do!
Alex Janz: What are some things that can negatively impact the environment during the holiday season?
Carolyn Kury de Castillo: I think one of the biggest things is the gifts we choose to purchase, and the amount of plastic we go through. We all know how many times we receive a gift that we may not ever use, or contains extensive plastic in the packaging. So one of the things I always ask myself before I give someone a gift is when are they going to use this? And how much plastic is this involving? And will this end up in a landfill? And if I answer yes to those, I can’t see myself buying that kind of gift. Those ones that are going to be sitting in a landfill for hundreds of years.
The other thing that contains a lot of waste, obviously, is the wrapping. The landfills the days after Christmas are stuffed full of these things and oftentimes stuffed with things that the recycling bin isn’t able to recycle. A lot of wrapping paper goes in the recycling and it’s simply not able to be recycled. It has to go sadly into the black bin. So there’s many things associated with gift giving that sadly contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.
A lot of people are of the mindset that this accumulation of waste only happens once a year, so why would it be a big deal? But can you expand a little on what kind of environmental impact it actually has?
It has a huge impact, even if it is just one day. Some people may say it’s one day, but it’s actually a month of gift giving and decorations and all the things associated with Christmas and the holidays that go along with them.
All you need to do is look at the bins and how stuffed they are, and imagine that’s just yours. Then imagine duplicating that for like a million Calgarians, all producing that much extra waste on that particular week.
It’s not like you’re not going to have more or less enjoyment at Christmas by having, sustainable Christmas. I think that’s part of the problem, people tend to look at something sustainable as providing them with less joy or less satisfaction. But really, its just a different way of looking at things.
It’s just doing things a little differently than we have in the past, that may look different to some other people. Some other people might look at that and go, “Oh, that’s odd.” But be the first to do it. Then be the first to wrap your present a in a scarf or something, right? Or in first to maybe not have a traditional Christmas tree to do something different. That’s where change starts with the individual.
What would you say are some first steps that individuals can start to think about, to make their holiday more sustainable?
I would say to go back to gift giving again. First of all, do need to buy a gift for that person? Can it be something that’s more, perhaps thoughtful, a more personalized gift? Can it be something like some very nice cookies? Start to think about those things.
I always say food gifts. People are not going to return food because everyone loves food. So those are wonderful gifts. Whether it’s cookies or the nuts and bolts, you know, those snacks. There are so many different specialty foods that would reflect your thoughtfulness of that person. It’s not something you just went to the mall and just picked up.
It’s the thought you had to go through. This is what that person in my life would really like. So I’m going to personalize this gift for them. And personalizing can lead to things like gifts of plants — plants are a wonderful gift to give people. Some other gifts that come to mind are gift cards, memberships, things like that, experiences, massages.
There’s so many things that people wouldn’t necessarily buy for themselves or spend on themselves that you could provide them with. I always say the experience gifts are incredible, and if you do feel the need to buy a physical gift, thrifting is a wonderful way to buy both decorations and gifts. In terms of gifting locally, there’s so many wonderful refillable shops in Calgary.
So those are really easy ways we can do things that that don’t require any kind of suffering.
And what would you recommend for some sustainable but affordable substitutes for wrapping paper, bows and tags?
Gift bags. I have gift bags that are older than my kids are. We store them in a box and they come out every year. I also have the same wrapping paper that I’ve reused over and over again. I admit it sounds weird, but, you know, if anyone knows me and my family, we carefully unwrap the presents and if there’s ribbon and paper, we’re sure to preserve it for the next year.
The brown paper, the tissue paper that comes when you buy something during the course of the year. I also save those things for Christmas. Then that can be repurposed as opposed to just going in a landfill or in compost. You have to remember, even when people feel, “Oh, it’s okay, I’m putting it into recycling,” we have to remember a lot of wrapping paper, does not go into recycling. So recycling and composting should be your very, very last resort. It should be not consuming them in the first place. I think too often we have this kind of halo effect where we think, “Oh good, I put it in the green bin or the blue bin,” but that’s not necessarily the best thing.
One thing that always seems to be debated, are Christmas trees: A real one? A fake one? Can you discuss the best practices you would suggest for this?
I’ve had an artificial tree and we’ve had it for 25 years. That was our particular choice because we didn’t want to go to drive every year to pick up a tree. We certainly didn’t want to cut one down. Don’t get me wrong, there is an argument that plastic trees are the biggest waste because they end up in a landfill at some point.
It’s a really hard one. It just it breaks my heart to see trees being composted or being tossed out after a week to a month of use. That doesn’t seem right to me either. But if I were to do it all over again, I would say to a young family, if you have a plant at home, decorate it.
I’m looking at this oleander that we have in our house right now, it’s about a meter and a half tall. Put some lights around it, that would be perfect.
This brings me back to what I said earlier—it’s just looking at things differently now. The holidays don’t have to be the same as it always has been for the past 100, 200 years.
You can have that beautiful tropical plant that you have in your house that’s beautifying your house all year. Throw some decorations on it. Or there’s also non-plastic fake Christmas trees that are basically just wood with little slats to hang all your decorations on. They’re really cute. Just different ways of looking at things. Or decorate by simply putting lights in random places around your house! Yeah, there’s different ways you can do things.
How can we encourage family members and the people in our community to be more environmentally friendly during the holidays, and help to change the way that we all look at things?
I think the best way to do it is lead by example. Do it and in really kind ways. And have fun with it, make it look appealing. Like I said, when you buy those gifts, say from the refillable shops, it introduces someone to a whole new world of potential. Or when someone comes to your house and they see your decorations are real pine cones or non-traditional plastic-free kind of stuff, or see how lovely your decorated plant looks, these are the kinds of things that create really wholesome discussions.
I think the more of us doing that and the more the message gets out, it can be in a gentle way, and it can be in a way that makes it look like, “Hey, wasn’t this fun?” I had a really good time making these cookies, or thrifting decorations.
There’s so many benefits. It doesn’t always have to be with the fear element. There’s always that aspect, you know, that the actual concrete examples we’re seeing of climate change. But there’s also fun ways to make conscious consumer choices as well. I don’t know if Christmas is the best time to fear monger.
Think about the different alternatives just to make a pledge. Make a New Year’s resolution to have a no plastic new year. To start, think about the things you can do in the new year and how can I not consume more?