Christmas Shouldn’t be all About Spending Money – Spare a Thought for the Environment too!
It seems that no sooner Bonfire Night and Halloween are out of the way our thoughts quickly drift to Christmas celebrations and the endless round of shopping trips and spending excess. In recent years we’ve become accustomed to spending truckloads of money with little thought for whether it’s really necessary. Here at Rubbish Please we’ve been considering ways we can cut back on spending during this holiday time and how we can help our customers reduce, reuse and recycle more.
With that in mind we’ve come up with some interesting Christmas decorations you can make using recycled materials.
FESTIVE GARLANDS USING OLD CHRISTMAS CARDS
Find the full step-by-step tutorial at Party Planning Center
This is an excellent project if you’ve got young children as it requires no complicated folding techniques or messy gluing. Just take a pile of last year’s Christmas cards you’ve probably still got hanging around, cut out some shapes and stick them to a piece of string using sticky tape. If you haven’t got any cards try junk mail or colourful magazines. Many high street stores have already brought out their Xmas magazines so why not bring a few home for the kids.
WINE CORK REINDEER
Tutorial by Jen Kim Made
For all you wine lovers out there don’t be tempted to just ditch your old wine corks but keep them and make some cute reindeer decorations for your home. Nip out into the garden and gather a few festive twigs and if you’ve got older children you can involve them in creating their very own festive reindeer and you never know they may come up with some ideas of their own. If you’ve got a few little bits of Christmas ribbon left over why not add these to the reindeer for a bit more colour.
XMAS TREE DECORATIONS FROM AN OLD KEYBOARD
Easy guide in Instructables
Are you expecting to receive a new computer keyboard for Xmas? Then why not put the old one to good use rather just throwing it away. Dismantle the keyboard and thread the keys onto some festive string. See if you can come up with some fun Xmas words.
PLASTIC BOTTLE SNOWMEN
Have fun with your little angels with this tutorial by Little Learning for Two
Are your kid’s avid yoghurt or fizzy drinkers and you find yourself throwing large numbers of empty plastic bottles away every week? Using some simple craft supplies and a bit of imagination you can have fun with your kids creating some wintery snowmen.
EMPTY JARS TRANSFORMED INTO SNOWFLAKE LANTERNS
Classy mason jar craft tutorial by Ginger Snap Crafts
Bet you’ve got a few empty jars hanging around and unwanted piles of junk mail waiting to be collected for recycling. Cut out some snowflakes from the junk mail and stick them inside the jars. For added festive appeal use a tea light for some festive atmosphere in your home.
We hope we’ve given you a bit of Christmas inspiration and you can come up with a few ideas of your own. But remember increasing levels of recycling is not just for Christmas it should be a goal for life.
