Doing away with wrapping paper and upcycling discards: How some families are reducing waste this Christmas
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Doing away with wrapping newspaper and upcycling discards: How some families are reducing waste this Christmas
Ms Sheri Goh and her mother Madam Lily Chua are practising a zero-waste Christmas this year. (Photo: Jalelah Abu Baker)
SINGAPORE: Ms Sheri Goh has a big family unit. She has an elder sister and xiii cousins just on her female parent'due south side. She and her cousins accept 12 children among them. This ways that Christmas tin be a big, messy and wasteful thing.
To make gift-giving more manageable, the family has worked out a strategy. Each child gets three gifts.
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"That's all the same a huge number of presents with a huge amount of wrapping. Every year, I've noticed, we fill two to 3 garbage bags of wrapping waste," the 43-year-sometime told CNA.
Things will be a little different this yr.
On the suggestion of a cousin, the family is doing away with the wrapping of gifts. If they must, they are to apply newspaper or waste matter paper. Ms Goh, an editor with a religious publication, volition use junk mail she started collecting a few months agone as wrapping paper.
She is also putting more idea into her wrapping.
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"Using glue instead of record makes for easier recycling afterwards. I'g besides using ribbons that I already have at dwelling, too as re-purposed ribbons from various production packaging, to make the presents wait nicer," she said.
"My mom came from a poor family unit so she's always had the ethos that we should not waste material, that we should try to reuse as much equally we can," Ms Goh said.
But giving presents is not the only way to celebrate Christmas, she added. She lamented that information technology has go also commercialised. This yr, she is giving her parents the gift of time.
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"My parents and I are giving to each other a road trip upwards to Malaysia, where they will pay for food and transport and we (she and her husband) will pay for lodging. The souvenir of time with each other is priceless, doesn't create any gift-wrapping waste material, is definitely something the other party will want and will terminal forever," she said.
HANDMADE WITH Honey
Others are making the effort to create their own gifts. Ms Sheau Chan, 46, has fabricated cardholders using pall fabric swatches that would otherwise be discarded. Her Christmas cards are fabricated out of sturdy mooncake boxes.
She reuses the wrapping paper from the gifts she receives. She also collects Esplanade concert programmes "considering they were quite pretty" to apply every bit wrappers.
Ms Chan, who unremarkably hosts her friends for Christmas, said that she tends to become either bigger or more gifts as the host, merely she has told her friends at that place was no need for that.
"I told them to get me vegetables that concluding for a long time, or home-fabricated items, because my best friend bakes. They tin can give me a cauliflower. I'll be more than happy," said the events planner.
Similarly, Ms Julia Anna Deufel, 27, is making the probiotic drink, kombucha, and tempeh (fermented soybean block) to requite as gifts.
She asked that her aunt - who oft gives her online shopping vouchers - to donate to her diving fund. Ms Deufel is working towards getting certified to exist able to establish seaweed and coral while diving.
She will not exist putting upwardly a Christmas tree at home this twelvemonth, a suspension abroad from a family tradition. Instead she has a small reusable S$2 tree. Her Advent wreath, which is traditionally used in the lead-up to Christmas, is besides not typical. Information technology is made of used wine bottles which too function as candle holders.
"A real wreath volition need to come from somewhere where pine trees abound, so it's probably going to come on a plane, with a high carbon footprint," she said.
Practising a zero-waste Christmas is an extension of their daily habits.
For example, Ms Goh has been using a reusable bag for more than than 20 years. Clothes are also always handed down, and some clothes by Madam Chua are still being worn twoscore years on.
AMOUNT OF WASTE EXPECTED TO INCREASE OVER FESTIVE SEASON
The Singapore Environment Quango (SEC) said the corporeality of waste generated in Singapore has increased 7-folds over the final four decades.
Coupled with low plastic recycling, tonnes of nutrient waste product and the "traditional Asian view of over-preparing festive meals and elaborate festive packaging", the amount of waste is expected to increase over the festive season, the SEC's head of Environmental Certifications Liow Chean Siang.
Through its food loss and food waste written report, the SEC establish that consumers avert food waste product by keeping unconsumed food, and by not being swayed past promotional offers to buy backlog nutrient items that are potentially wasted.
Mr Liow urged merrymakers to prefer these habits, and to adopt the "5 Rs" - reducing, reusing, recycling, refusing and repurposing.
He suggested altruistic unwanted gifts instead of throwing them away, and reducing the utilize of souvenir wrappers.
"Giving pre-loved items as gifts is trending and is gaining larger acceptance in other markets, every bit more people want to be sustainable and exist part of a circular economy where nothing goes to waste matter," he said.
He cautioned that as more waste product is generated, the touch of climatic change such equally rising sea level, loss of biodiversity, and changes in crop yield may pose significant risks to the manner people live.
Only everyone can play a part is trying to mitigate this in role by consuming less and wasting less, he added.
"It is important for Singaporeans to remember that less is always best."
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/zero-waste-christmas-xmas-recycling-gifts-upcycling-245496
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