18 Sustainable Christmas Ideas For A Lower Waste, Lower Carbon & More Affordable Holiday Season

The holidays are meant to feel magical! Slow mornings, sparkly lights, shared meals, time with family and friends, and small traditions that mean something. But behind the cozy scenes, Christmas is one of the most wasteful, most commercial, resource-intensive, and costly times of the year.

From mountains of discarded packaging and uneaten food to fast-trend décor and novelty gifts destined for landfill, the season now drives a spike in waste, emissions, and overconsumption. And that demand fuels supply chains built on rushed production, low-cost materials, and labour practices that too often overlook the people making our “must-have” holiday items. In the process, we can lose sight of what this time is really about, not to mention get super stressed about the financial costs and making it all “perfect”.

So how can we slow down and celebrate Christmas in an eco-friendly way? This guide brings together practical, achievable, and more affordable sustainable Christmas tips to help you cut the waste, avoid the mindless buying, and bring the focus back to meaningful, ethical choices. We also include several DIY, environmentally friendly Christmas ideas (perfect for slowing down with a loved one pre-Christmas) and throughout the list, you’ll also find links to our deeper guides if you’d like to dive further into specific eco-friendly Christmas ideas.

Related guides: Sustainability Tips, How to Reduce Your Carbon Footprint

Gift Related Eco-friendly Christmas Tips

With well over $5B worth of wrapping paper produced globally each year, almost all of which is not recyclable, one can assume most of this ends up in landfills. If you ask us, it seems a bit silly to wrap unneeded packaging with even more unneeded packaging.

But, we understand if you want a gift to be ‘present’able, and it is SO much fun for kids so let’s not go full Grinch. With a bit of careful planning, you can find wrapping paper brands that are prioritizing compostable or recyclable alternatives (unlike most of the shiny and foil-covered papers), and others that offer reusable alternatives. Our guide to eco-friendly wrapping paper shares several of these brands and ideas.

Better yet, make it yourself. Wrapping gifts with recycled newspaper, reusable bags, and old cardboard boxes not only provides a fun exercise in creativity, but makes for totally zero waste gift wrapping.

Once the wrapping has been ripped off, the most sustainable next step would be to collect any wrapping that can be reused next year and recycle the rest (removing all plastic tape first).

The most sustainable Christmas cards are those you already own, so if you have packs of cards still left over from last year, use those first before buying new.

Then, consider making your own DIY Christmas cards with whatever is lying around the house or with some of the mountains of packaging that’s coming into your home from gift ordering or other sources. It is absolutely better to make simple, thoughtful, designed-by-you cards with a heartfelt note inside than almost any other type of card. Your gift recipient will be so much more impressed and feel extra loved!

Alternatively, say ‘seed-sons’ greetings to your friends and family members with environmentally friendly Christmas cards that help pollinators. WeMadeBoutique’s sustainable Christmas cards are crafted from recycled paper and wildflower seeds. Stamped with snowmen, reindeer, Santa hats, and Christmas trees, all that’s left is for you to add your favorite message.

Gifts are the key to an ethical and sustainable Christmas. As much as we love to imagine mystical, happy elves making all our Christmas presents, the reality is quite different. The very real people making our Christmas gifts deserve fair living wages and safe working conditions, at the very least. Though they may cost a bit more, this is one area you don’t want to be a Christmas Scrooge in.

But conscious Christmas presents don’t have to cost more. Santa loves our milk and cookies, why can’t our own family members too? Consumable gifts are not only some of the best (and most affordable) and they can be anything from delicious desserts to eco bath bombs.

Our other gift guides can help you find something meaningful and sustainable this Christmas:

• Eco-Friendly Gifts for those that care about sustainability more generally.
• Zero Waste Gifts for those living a zero waste lifestyle or trying to reduce their waste.
• Ethical Gifts for those who care deeply about human and animal rights.
• Non-Toxic Gifts for those concerned about the damaging impacts of toxic chemicals.

Things are temporary; memories are forever, which is why experience gifts are one of our favorite Christmas shopping tips. By giving an experience, you not only reduce the reliance on physical resources, but you also provide your loved ones with a potentially once in a lifetime opportunity.

Concert tickets, movie passes, and national parks passes are a few tangible ideas we can think of, but even something as simple as a DIY home cooked wine and dine night would do the trick.

Other ideas could include:

• Homemade picnic in a favorite park: complete with baked treats, a cozy blanket, and a thermos of something warm.
• “Chore vouchers” or a helping-hand IOU: Help them deep clean, organise a room, garden, or tackle a project they’ve been putting off.
• Shared baking or cooking day: Make cookies, bread, a fancy dinner, or try a new cuisine together.
• DIY spa night: Face masks, candles, relaxing music, and a phone-free evening.
• Sunrise or sunset outing: Drive somewhere scenic, bring hot drinks, and watch the colours shift together.
• Handmade workshop night: Pottery, painting, candle making, or building something from reclaimed wood.
• “Choose your own adventure” day: You plan 3-4 small surprises and let them pick throughout the day.
• Nature walk + thermos of tea: Simple, grounding, and no impact!
• Tech-free game night: Board games, puzzles, mulled cider, and cozy blankets.
• Memory-making day: Recreate an old photo, visit a place from your early relationship, or revisit a shared tradition.

Over 40 million Christmas crackers end up in the bin by the end of Christmas day. That’s a shocking amount of cardboard resting in our landfills. And that’s without considering all the plastic knick-knacks in them, which 99% of people said they chuck in the bin too!

Bring in the festive season with a bang by opting for eco-friendly christmas crackers instead. This guide includes mostly crackers you can buy but you can also make your own, and they don’t even have to be crackers, they can be thoughtful thrifted gifts, chocolates, notes, jokes, or poems in a little reused paper bag.

Alternatively, Keep This Cracker makes reusable eco-crackers that can be used for every environmentally-friendly Christmas to come.

No eco Christmas is complete without a countdown to commemorate the day. Sadly, advent calendars are another one of the biggest sources of waste. A traditional chocolate advent calendar has 38 times as much packaging per gram as a standard chocolate bar, and 12 times as much plastic.

Take a look at our guide to reusable advent calendars. Many of which are easy enough to buy but we also include several DIY Christmas Ideas to make yourself, many of which are quicker and easier than you might think.

Decor-Related Eco-Friendly Christmas Ideas

There’s nothing like decking the halls with good ol’ fashion DIY decor. We’re taking it back to the days of garlands made from pine cones and wreaths made from found foliage.

Making DIY decorations is as simple as taking a walk in the park (sometimes literally, considering all you can make using scavenged natural materials). See our guide to DIY Christmas decorations for inspiration, or try this fun popcorn garland.

But if your schedule is already packed with gift shopping, present wrapping, and holiday travel plans, plenty of brands sell sustainable Christmas decorations made from natural, recycled and/or recyclable materials.

We’re all for putting a sock in mass-made Christmas stockings this holiday season. Like other fast fashion items, if you can get them for just a couple bucks, they probably weren’t made in the most ethical of manners.

For just a few extra dollars, you can invest in sustainable Christmas stockings made from natural materials and fair working conditions. These upcycled Christmas stockings from Ten Thousand Villages follow both those criteria, and are still affordable. Or more sustainable yet, just use pillow cases like we did in the good old days!

Don’t forget the sustainable stocking stuffers! After all, no one wants to wake up to an empty stocking on the big day. Stockings shouldn’t just be filled with cheap, disposable junk that you found at the store. Every item should be chosen with purpose, because quality far surpasses quantity. Brainstorm things you know they’ll use, like the brand of deodorant they wear or their favorite snacks. Deodorant might seem like a weird stocking filler, but at least it’ll stop the stink of both BO and silly useless gifts.

Chestnuts roasting by the fire, sugar cookies baking in the oven, snow melting on the window sill… we get why seasonal scents are so addicting. But considering that disposed candles may remain in the landfill for 1,000 Christmases to come (and are often made with harsh chemicals), we aren’t sure that the temporary joy they bring makes up for their long term consequences.

Personally, we prefer our candles to warm our homes, not the environment. Which is why we opt for sustainable candles during the festive season. Doubling as gifts and decor, they’re a surefire way to a more environmentally sustainable Christmas. And if you have the time, you can make your own. There’s a ton of tutorials out there or Siblings Candles offers kits for you to create your own.

Dating back to the earliest civilizations, wreaths have been associated with life, rejuvenation, and renewal. Ironic, considering many of them are made from plastics that are associated with exactly the opposite.

Similar to the real vs fake Christmas tree debate, there is a lot of talk about whether reusable plastic wreaths are more eco-friendly than fresh evergreen wreaths that have to be replaced every year. So long as an evergreen wreath is harvested sustainably and disposed of correctly, we’d say it’s the better choice.

The fresh olive or eucalyptus wreaths from The Citizenry are elegant and earthy, with a versatile appearance you can use all year long.

Or, instead of boughing to commercial pressures, try making your own DIY wreath.

A tree without ornaments is like a Christmas without a Hallmark movie binge: sad. Whether you have a Charlie Brown Christmas tree or a Rockefeller Center one, you can’t leave it barren.

Don’t buy those plastic baubles and opt for sustainable ornaments instead by making your own ethical alternatives or buying recycled ornaments from shops like those by Paper High. You can also check your local thrift store to see what twinkling treasures you can find. Our guide to DIY ornaments (linked above) has several sustainable ideas for ornaments.

Considering the seasonal lights in the U.S. use more electricity than some countries do in an entire year, we’d say this is one of the most important sustainable Christmas tips. However, your days can still be merry and bright with conscious lights.

By opting for LED lights over incandescent lights, you can easily reduce your energy consumption and your electricity bill for the month of December. Even then, be conscious about the amount you are using. Light pollution not only has a huge environmental impact on plants and nocturnal animals, but also human health!

Remember to simply turn them off when the household is asleep or if no one is around to enjoy them.

There’s no better answer for how to have a green Christmas than with a literal green live Christmas tree. But a real Christmas tree isn’t always the best choice. Check out what other factors to consider when choosing the most sustainable Christmas tree. TL;DR: When harvested responsibly from a certified sustainable (like the FSC) source or small, organic farm, it can be (we share a list of organic and non-toxic farms in our guide).

We know going out and cutting down your own tree is tradition for many, but we really can’t stress enough how important it is to leave these young, carbon sequestering trees in the wild.

Out of the 350 to 500 million growing trees on tree farms across the U.S, only 30 million trees are harvested each year. It may seem counterintuitive, but by opting for a real tree, and disposing of it properly (covered in our guide linked above), you can keep sustainable tree farms in business and keep healthy forests alive.

Potted trees are also a good option because after the season, they can be replanted and given a new lease on life. Whether you buy a potted Christmas tree, or rent one at a local dealer, you will drastically reduce your greenhouse gas emissions.

Clearly, artificial trees don’t make the nice list. Still, we aren’t against every fake tree. A plastic free Christmas tree could be the only option for people who have tree allergies or simply don’t want the mess of real trees. We’d recommend looking for one secondhand first and using it for many, many years.

Alternatively, Welcome To The Wood Shop has incredibly unique and minimalist tree options made from fresh and salvaged wood materials.

Environmentally Friendly Christmas Dinner, Food & Drink Ideas

It’s not the holidays without copious amounts of food, but be sure to celebrate with seasonally seasoned meals that support sustainable food systems. When we say seasonal food, we also mean local and organic food—which also serves as a boon to your local economy. Seasonal ingredients are not only fresher, but also tastier and more nutritious since pesticides and chemicals don’t have to be used to preserve them.

While it depends on where you live, seasonal Winter ingredients usually include citrus fruits, root vegetables, apples, chestnuts, and kale. If you need meal inspiration, check out these delicious food recipes from one of our favorite food brands, Patagonia Provisions.

The blog Luci’s Morsels is also bursting with mouthwatering recipe ideas, all organized by seasons. Looking at her winter recipes, we’re already drooling at the idea of a hearty and warming vegan broccoli potato soup in front of the hearth. The Zero Waste Chef is another site we love, packed with recipes that reduce waste.

Speaking of food, let’s talk about plant-based meals. In general, switching to a plant-based diet is one of the biggest ways you can reduce your environmental footprint. Unsurprisingly, considering a traditional turkey Christmas dinner alone has more than double the greenhouse gas emissions than a vegan nut roast (isn’t that nuts?).

By making a vegan Christmas dinner (or even partly vegan) a family tradition, you can keep the ghosts of Christmas future full of joy.

Chances are you’re going to have one, or a few, festive dinner celebrations this season. And, between cooking and cleaning, we have no doubt you’ll be tempted to turn to plastic cutlery to speed up the process (who could blame you?). But, pesky plastic forks and knives simply don’t cut it.

Each year, over 100,000 marine animals and over 1 million seabirds die from ingesting plastic, with plastic cutlery being some of the main instigators. Then there’s microplastics…

If you’re hosting a big holiday event, choosing real metal cutlery (or eco-friendly cutlery if you have to buy new) will drastically reduce your single-use holiday waste. If you don’t think you’ll have enough and don’t want to buy new, try your local thrift store, ours has so much cutlery for next to no cost.

When the weather drops, there’s nothing better to warm the hands (and heart) than a nice, piping hot cuppa of sustainable tea.

Grace Farms is one of our favorite suppliers of caffeinated cups. The Certified B Corp addresses humanitarian issues all while providing some brew-tiful, low waste blends. Their Classic Chai filled with ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and spices, is one of our favorite Winter flavors.

Last but perhaps one of the most important tips for an eco-friendly Christmas: compost, compost, compost!

The amount of food waste the festive period brings is actually alarming with over 42 million dishes wasted every season. Obviously, we’d rather just avoid food waste altogether by taking a head count of our guests and planning out exactly the amount of food we need. But even then, you might not be able to avoid leftovers.

While you can always try one of these recipes from your seasonal scraps, chances are you’ll be tired of the festive flavors by day three.

The next best option is to donate your leftovers to the critters in the soil by composting at home. You don’t need a crazy indoor compost system either; you can simply put your scraps in a bag and store it in the freezer until it’s full. Frozen veggie scraps can be boiled into delicious vegetable soup stock, or when the spring thaw comes, they can be buried outside in the garden.

Christmas may feel joyful, but it’s also one of the most waste-intensive times of the year. In the U.S., holiday packaging and food waste surge, overwhelming landfills with millions of extra tons of discarded wrapping paper, single-use plastics, cardboard, and spoiled food. Much of this comes from mindless consumption: buying novelty gifts, fast-decor items, and trendy products that are poorly made, non-recyclable, and rarely used beyond the season. In the UK, it’s much the same. Take a look at these Christmas Waste stats from GWP if you’re interested.

This consumption also fuels a global supply chain built on low-cost, high-volume production which is often linked to poor working conditions, low wages, and minimal environmental oversight.

A more sustainable Christmas simply means taking a step back, thinking about what Christmas really means to you and finding ways to reduce your impact. This may look like reducing unnecessary waste, resisting the pressure to buy for the sake of buying, and choosing gifts, decorations, and food that respect both people and the planet.

As you can see, a lot of planning goes into the sustainable festive season. Don’t let that discourage you.

By no means do you have to follow ALL of these ideas to have a more sustainable Christmas. All we want for Christmas is you… to try your best this holiday season. No single person can solve the climate crisis, but if we all collectively try our best to do what we can, a sustainable future is still possible.

So, share these top eco-friendly Christmas tips with friends and extended family members so they too can have a truly merry (and more affordable) Christmas.

Another holiday guide worth a read: Sustainable Halloween.

Editor’s note: This article was first published in November 2023 and updated in November 2025 with refreshed ideas, additional tips, and new imagery to better support a more sustainable Christmas.