Top 10 Tips for a Sustainable Christmas

The festive season is a time for family, friends and merriment, but also a period for self-reflection. With the climate crisis dominating conversations around the world, many of us are looking for ways to reduce our carbon footprint, particularly at Christmas time.

This year, we wanted to offer some simple, sustainable alternatives for Christmas. Although it may seem tricky at first, there are many ways to celebrate in style, without costing the planet.

Here are our Top 10 suggestions from Tala and our Instagram community:

Dried Oranges

When it came to decorate Tala Studios, we opted for natural alternatives to deck our halls. Drying oranges in the oven produced low-cost and low-carbon tree ornaments that looked great and had our studio smelling festive for weeks. We also inspired Ingrid, blog writer of That Scandinavian Feeling to do the same.

Wreath Making

We created a fun activity for our office Christmas party, encouraging the team to make festive wreaths with foliage sourced from our local floral favourites, Rebel Rebel, and our dried oranges continued to steal the show.

Christmas Crackers

Also during our Christmas party, we made our own crackers, featuring a chocolate rather than a plastic toy.

Vegetarian Dinner

When it comes to mitigating the climate crisis, changing our individual and collective food choices can have the biggest impact. That’s why at Tala we have a vegetarian-only catering policy, leading us to invite the fabulous caterers, Dinner Ladies, to prepare our meat-free Christmas meal.
Following the reports that 18% of global emissions are a result of livestock and dairy production, we are happy to have made this change.

We reached out to our Instagram community to ask for more ideas to share and inspire our audience. Here are the best crafty and creative suggestions:

Room Sprays

Interior design duo Interior Fox gave a tutorial on making homemade room sprays as a thoughtful gift idea or holiday craft activity.

Shop Second-Hand

Stylist and influencer Nancy Straughan chose to shop for second-hand books to gift to loved ones this Christmas. Explore vintage bookshops or your local charity shop to find a literary classic, cookbook or hidden gem, and support your high street in the process. Big tick from us!

Festive Bird Feeders

Festive gifts don’t need to stop at humans: Moditional home made her own bird feeders to add festive feels in the garden, while attracting Robins and other birds to join the party.

Foliage

Tala Instagram follower Hannah with a Spanner foraged her garden to make her festive decorations, dressing her home with rich, earthy greens for maximum Christmas vibes.

Wrapping paper

Another Tala Instagram follower, A Constant Dreamer has used recyclable paper and ribbons to wrap her presents, while she has taken inspiration from her grandad for writing name tags, reminding us that resourcefulness and sustainable practice isn’t anything new.

Christmas Trees

Sustainable interior designer Lynne Lambourne has plumped for a potted tree this year, meaning she can decorate it as usual and then watch it grow for years to come.

For those of you with real trees that are not potted, make sure to check how and where to recycle it after the holiday.

We hope this has given you some inspiration ahead of Merry (and sustainable) Christmas season.