Forget White Christmas. Sure, it’s a cracker of a Christmas film. But it’s the twenty-first century, and we’re dreaming of a Green Christmas this year around – just like the ones we don’t yet know.

Christmas, after all, may be the season of giving, but it’s also the season of giving the environment around us a really hard time. From one billion Christmas cards sold a year in the UK to 30% extra waste, it’s not a very jolly season for the atmosphere around us.

Worse, still, is that we often don’t really care. A new report by KIS Finance suggests that while 61% of people claim to be concerned about the environment, only 9% prioritise this when Christmas shopping. Dogmas are for Christmas, not just for life, guys.

It’s not difficult to see why this is the case. When you’re racing around a perspiring Hamleys on Christmas Eve trying to get the latest polymer nightmare, the last thing on your mind is Greta Thunberg’s view on plastics.

With a week to go until the big day, we’ve come up with a few suggestions that just might change that. We’re not saying you should scrap presents altogether, or have a frozen Christmas without heating – but a few small steps could go a long way. 

And give an excuse to avoid that Hamleys trip.

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IT’S A WRAP

The UK bins the equivalent of 108m rolls of Christmas wrapping paper every festive season. Which probably warrants one of those ‘if you stretched them all out you could reach the moon and back’ facts, but we’re not maths boffins. But basically, that’s a load.

There’s lots of ways to make a difference, while still keeping your Christmas a wrapper’s delight. It might seem a bit overkill, but try keeping and reusing your wrapping paper for future prezzies (i.e., don’t rip it open like a five year old). Alternatively, you can switch up your wrapping paper for brown paper (recycled, like our new magazine paper!) or even ditch paper altogether for cute fabric wraps.