December's Sustainability Challenge
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December Sustainability Challenge: Festive Green Tips
The festive season is a time for giving, celebrating, and connecting with loved ones — and it’s also a great chance to be kind to the planet. 🌍
This month, our Sustainability Ambassadors are encouraging everyone to enjoy the holidays in a more sustainable way. Whether you celebrate Christmas, Diwali, Hanukkah, Ramadan, or simply the season itself, these ideas can help make your celebrations more eco-friendly all year round. ✨
How You Can Get Involved
Let us know your favourite sustainable festive tip below, and be in with a chance of winning a voucher!
- Reuse and reimagine — decorate with what you already have, or make your own cards, gifts, and ornaments.
- Wrap sustainably — use brown paper, old packaging, or reusable gift bags, and decorate with foraged bits like holly, ivy, or pinecones. Remember to recycle wrapping paper and cards (avoid glittery types). ♻️
- Cook with seasonal fruits and vegetables, and plan meals carefully to reduce waste. Turn leftovers into new dishes and try a “zero food waste week” between Christmas and New Year. 🍲
- Give the gift of experience — a meal together, a day out, or your time. Thoughtful gifts mean less waste and more memories. 🎁
- Swap or donate unwanted items instead of buying new — your pre-loved things might be just what someone else needs.
- Use LED lights for decorations — they’re brighter, safer, and much more energy efficient. 💡
- Compost your real Christmas tree or check if your local council offers a recycling collection — around 8 million real trees are disposed of in the UK each year, creating roughly 12,000 tonnes of waste.
Did you know?
UK households produce around 30% more waste over the festive period — but small changes like reusing, recycling, and planning ahead can make a huge difference for our planet. 🌱
Everyone who takes part will be entered into a prize draw for a £20 voucher, and we’ll also choose our favourite festive photos or stories to win a £25 voucher each!
Share your favourite, festive, sustainable tip!
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Who's Listening
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Customer Engagement Specialist
I reuse old christmas cards and ribbons to decorate gifts, and use packing for wrapping paper. My family all shop for pre-loved gifts for each other from charity shops. When it comes to shopping and food, I use a shopping list and stick to a budget to avoid impulse buying and over-buying.
All leftovers are used up by cooking new dishes and freezing to make the meals go further. Any reduced food in the grocery store goes into the freezer for later.
All twinkly lights are on a timer to avoid over consumption! If I'm away over Christmas, I use a timer for lights and switch everything off that doesn't need to be left on.
If anyone is buying a cut tree but hasn't got it yet, I can highly recommend taking an old duvet cover with you (just a single is fine for a 6-7ft tree we've found). Our local Christmas tree farm is very happy to help pop the tree in that, rather than the usual plastic netting.
I use brown paper for wrapping presents, which I then tape up with brown paper tape. I make gifts tags from old Christmas cards. If I receive presents in gift bags, I keep these to reuse in future years.
We have an artificial tree which we have had for about 11 years and is still going strong. Many of the decorations we have had for years, some were made by our children and it is nice to see them every year.
We have crackers that can be reused each year, and are filled with paper hats and jokes that I saved from when we bought crackers. You could try making your own paper hats and writing your own jokes. Instead of gifts, we put foil wrapped mint chocolates in.
As a family group we share lists of what we would like for Christmas so no gift is an unwanted one.
For our loved ones that have passed away, I collect greenery, colourful stems and pretty seed pods from the garden to create something for their graves.
I found boxes on a street and picked them up and brought them home. 6 large boxes and they all fit inside each other for easy storage, they were wrapped in shiny wrapping paper and looked very christmassy. I gave them a little TLC, some celetape here and there and they looked as good as new. I have used these boxes to give my family gifts for the past three years, I ask for the boxes back and reuse again. Other than that, i use paper bags to gift presents and do not write the name on the tag, so that the person may reuse the bag again.
I have started giving less gifts over the years and more experiences. For the kids in my family, i usually take them away for the weekend to Gillivers land or some type of theme park/outdoor experience. It is great quality time and we are not over consuming by buying lots of things that usually end up in landfill within 6 months.
I put all unwanted items on olio or gumtree and make sure that nothing ends up in the bin and goes to a good home.
I encourage my family to limit the meat they buy during Christmas. Instead of having three different types of meat, they have reduced it to one. As well as trying my vegan dishes, sometimes they can't even tell the difference between the real and fake meat.
I ask my neighbours if they don't need their tree after Christmas and use it as compost for my allotment.