We’re dreaming of a green Christmas

What does Christmas mean to you? A jolly old knees up with colleagues at the annual party? Watching your waistline expand as you slip one more chocolate truffle into your mouth? Or wading through mountains of plastic tat, which probably won’t make it into the New Year?

Most of us enjoy Christmas or at least some parts of it! But this indulgent time of the year can have a big impact on our environmental footprint. Fear not, there are some simple and easy ways to ‘green-up’ Christmas in the office. Here are some of our favourite ideas.

1) Reduce

Send electronic Christmas cards. Christmas cards are a time honoured tradition. According to the Greeting Card Association, us Brits bought 100 million single Christmas cards, plus a further 900 million in packs or boxes of cards. That’s a lot of trees.

An ecard is a simple and effective way to send a Christmas greeting to your customers. You can even send a charity ecard and double the goodness. Loads of charities offer the option for an electronic card, and you can even personalise some. Check out this list of charities that offer Christmas ecards.

While you’re saving trees, why not send out electronic invites for your seasonal parties and gatherings? Paperlesspost is a good place to start for invitations.

Cut down on plastic. Most of us are trying to cut down single-use plastics. So rather than spend time and money on throwaway Christmas present for your clients, think about giving a charity gift. You could buy a goat, build a bog, or donate money to your chosen cause. There’s a good list of charity gifts on Money Saving Expert, which includes details on how much the charity actually gets.

Save electricity. Make sure someone turns off those festive lights when you leave the office at night. It is a simple, but effective way to reduce your energy consumption and your bills!

2) Reuse

Store your decorations. Don’t buy new Christmas decorations every year. Invest in a Really Useful storage box and stash them safely away for another year.

Use shredded paper for packaging. Fire up the paper shredder, or treat the office to a new machine, and use the bi-product to package and protect gifts.

3) Recycle

It’s estimated that recycling one tonne of paper saves about 17 trees and 26,500 litres of water. Make it easy for people to recycle with clearly marked bins. If you’re unsure what to recycle and where, look up your local facilities.

Now it’s time for your gift!
Choose from our range of free gifts including Christmas chocolate selection packs.