Tag: eco-friendly gift

10 Eco-Friendly Activity Ideas to Enjoy with Loved Ones

Eco-friendly activities are becoming increasingly popular as people become more aware of environmental preservation and protecting the earth from damage. There are many activities we can do to make a positive impact on our environment. For example, experiencing various outdoor activities, preparing food in a more sustainable way, to involving in to environmental action.

These activities can be fun and enjoyable to do with family, friends, or partners on weekends or holidays. They don’t have to be difficult or expensive to implement. It also guarantees a good time for everyone while also helping the earth.

Go Biking

Adventuring outdoors can be a great eco-friendly activity to do. It allows us to appreciate the natural beauty around us and can be also a great bonding experience with our favorite person.

Biking is one of outdoor activities which is a great way to reduce carbon emissions, spend quality time with loved ones, and enjoy nature. Unlike driving or flying, biking does not require fossil fuel and leaves no trace of carbon emission. Biking also offers a chance to get some fresh air and exercise. To ensure a safe and enjoyable experience, remember to wear a helmet, bring a water bottle, and activate GPS to make sure you don’t get lost.

*Biking offers a chance to get some fresh air and exercise while also enjoy nature and have a quality time with favorite person. Photo: Pexel/Solare Flares*

Hiking

Hiking can be a perfect activity to do with loved ones to connect with nature while also getting some exercise together. Before going on a hike, don’t forget to warm up, put away your gadgets, pack some snacks and drink water for the trip. Wear hiking boots and quick-dry outfits and be prepared to hit the trails for an environmentally friendly adventure. You may also consider bringing a trekking pole to help you navigate difficult terrain.

Camping

Leave your routine behind for a while and enjoy a green camping trip. It provides a wonderful experience to enjoy sitting around a campfire and have a meaningful conversation with loved ones by your side. Remember to minimize waste and leave no trace of trash. Don’t miss out on stargazing on clear nights. Playing guitar or games can also be perfect entertainment to enjoy together.

Public Transportation Road Trip

A road trip makes an amazing adventure, and we can try a different road trip experience by using public transportation. By taking a road trip using public transportation, we can explore new routes without increasing carbon emissions of our personal vehicle. This road trip will not only save your pocket but also the planet, while providing a fun and new experience with our loved ones.

Preparing Healthy Food with Low Waste Packaging

While outdoors activities provide opportunities to have an adventure and enjoy nature, we also can do activities in the way we prepare and enjoy food in an eco-friendlier way.

Cooking can be a fun activity to do together. You can prepare ingredients by choosing to shop directly from local farmers and buy some organic seasonal produce, like vegetables, fruits, and herbs. Set a garden indoors or in the yard of your home to grow vegetables, fruits, and herbs by yourself is also a great option. These ways ensure the food we consume has a much smaller carbon footprint and lower waste packaging.

Zero-waste Picnic

Enjoying food in an eco-friendlier way also can be done by having a picnic in a park, while enjoying the natural surrounding at the same time. It is not only saving money on restaurant bills but can also be an enjoyable activity to spend with family, friends, or a partner. Make sure the picnic leaves no waste and use reusable plates, glass, and cutlery. Store the food and drinks in reusable containers and save leftover food.

Upcycling and DIY Project

Thinking about what you can do with old and unused items in your home? One of the best eco-friendly ways to do it is upcycling. You can recycle broken, unused, or old items at home by upcycling them into something new and unique. It’s fun to do DIY project at home with your family to turn old T-shirts into tote bags, or plastic bottles into planters, or bottles into LED-light holders.

Establishing a Garage Sale

You may have many old and unused items in your home that are still in good condition. Instead of disposing of them away, you can collaborate with your family or a partner to gather and prepare those items for a garage sale. As the trend of secondhand items continues to grow as a solution to minimize waste, this activity is worth trying. It can be a way to educate people about the importance of reducing waste and preserving the environment.

Environmental Volunteering

Being involved in environmental actions is another great eco-friendly activity to do with family, best friend, or a partner. There are plenty of opportunities to get involved as volunteers in activities that benefit the environment. Beach clean-up events, tree-planting events, or mangrove planting can be good activities to try. You can even volunteer with Trees4Trees during planting season as a tree planter to help the reforestation efforts.

Gifting Trees

Gifting gifts can be a wonderful way to express our love and affection to the people we love most. There are many eco-friendly gift options to choose from. One unique and memorable gift idea is to gift a planted tree. This shows our love not only for our loved ones but also for the planet. By gifting a tree, we also do a reliable environmental action that contributes to help improve the environment. You can gift a tree to your loved ones by planting trees with Trees4Trees.

Gift Trees : Gift Trees to Your Loved Ones

7 Ways to Celebrate Sustainable Christmas and New Year

As the end of the year approaches, people around the world are busy planning a celebration and fun things to do with friends and family. Christmas and New Year are times for celebrating together with merry parties. Festive decorations, presents, food, and other ornaments enliven the celebration but often end up being trash and unpleasant for our environment.

But it is not difficult to make some changes and reduce the environmental impact because this celebration should not have to be a burden for the earth. We can always make Christmas even better by being aware of our impacts. Reduce waste, use compostable materials, and recycle whenever possible.

These 7 eco-friendly ways can help us to celebrate the Christmas and New Year seasons while caring for the earth.

A Live Tree

Celebrating Christmas and New Year might not be complete without a pine tree as part of the decorations. Using a live pine tree is the best option to reduce carbon footprint compared to the artificial tree or a cut-down real pine tree. You can use a pine tree planted in a pot or plant it outside the room to help absorb carbon dioxide.

Eco-friendly Decorations

Christmas and New Year decorations and ornaments are beautiful but often made from plastic and undegradable material. Instead of buying new ornaments, reusing last year’s decorations, or creating decorations and ornaments from reusable and eco-friendly materials will be the best choice to reduce undegradable waste.

You can also make your own eco-friendly ornaments. They can be from recycled materials like dried oranges, dried pine fruits, origami ornaments from the newspaper or reused paper, or also hang cookies on the tree.

Minimize the Energy Usage for Lighting

To reduce the energy during Christmas and New Year celebrations, you can choose solar-powered lights and eco-friendly candles made from soya, vegetable oil, or beeswax to complete the decorations. Also, make sure to keep the energy usage at a minimum by switching off the light when it is not in use.

Avoid Non-recyclable Single-use Table Ware

If you host a party or gathering to celebrate Christmas and New Year, avoid using single-use table ware. Minimize the use of glasses, plates, and cutlery made from undegradable materials like plastics, styrofoam, and paper coated with plastics as much as you can. Alternatively, you can ask your guest to bring their own plates, glasses, or water bottles.

Avoid Food Waste

Enjoying delicious and varied food is the best way to celebrate Christmas and New Year. But it is important to make plans and estimate how much food you need for the celebration. Always try to cut any food waste and use up those leftovers.

Less Gift Wrap or Use Recycled Paper to Wrap

Gifting is always fun to do during Christmas and New Year seasons. And it comes with tons of wrapping paper and plastic which always end up as trash. Compared to wrapping gifts with wrapping paper that contains glitter, plastic, or metallic finish that is harmful to the environment, using recycled wrapping paper is a better option. You can also use newspapers to wrap your gifts and decorate them with reusable items. To reduce using gift wrap, you can give a gift of an experience like cooking a special meal or a tutorial. Digital gifts like e-books, music apps, or movie apps subscriptions are also great options. You can also gift alive trees through Trees4Trees.

Eco-friendly Gift

Choose an eco-friendly gift for your loved ones as a Christmas and New Year presents. You can buy a long-lasting or second-hand product, DIY handcrafted, or things made from sustainably sourced materials. You can also gift a potted plant or gift an alive tree through Trees4trees. The tree you gift to your loved ones will contribute to improve the environment and help the local community where it is planted.

Learn more to know how you can gift trees for Christmas and New Year gifts to your loved ones: Give Trees as a Gift to Your Loved Ones

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10 Mother’s Day Eco-Friendly Gift Ideas

Different from most of the rest of the world which celebrates Mother’s Day in May, Indonesia celebrates Mother’s Day every 22 December. It is celebrated as Mother’s Day after the first Indonesia Women’s Congress convened on December 22, 1928, promoting women’s rights.

Like Mother’s Day celebrations in other countries, Mother’s Day in Indonesia is meant to honor women, especially mothers. Friends and family give cards, flowers, and small presents on this day to show their appreciation for favorite women and mothers. In celebrating Mother’s Day, gift-giving can be a wasteful activity. But it should not be. However, we should also love mother earth while giving a gift to our beloved mother.

There are ways we can cut down on the environmental effect when giving gifts. A sustainable gift is a perfect choice as it is more eco-friendly and far less to end up in the trash and unused. This list of 10 Mother’s Day eco-friendly gift ideas will get you started! These gifts are not only thoughtful but also kind to mother earth.

Beeswax food wrap

If your mom really enjoys cooking or loves to spend a lot of time preparing food, beeswax food wrap would be a perfect eco-friendly gift. It is a plastic-free and organic food wrapper that your mom can store the family’s food in an eco-friendly way. By giving this as a gift, you also help her to start a zero-waste movement in her kitchen.

Eco-friendly Dishes Brush

To reduce the plastic and undegradable waste from the kitchen, you also can give a set of eco-friendly dish brushes to your mother as a Mother’s Day gift. It is usually made from coconut coir and natural bamboo that is one hundred percent biodegradable and safe for mother earth.

Bicycle

Biking is a great way for moms to get exercise. Gifting a new bike to mom as a Mother’s Day gift is a great way to get her exercise. It makes her healthy and of course, it is a zero-emission vehicle.

Earth-friendly Bath Products

These days, there are so many varieties of bath products made from natural, free preservatives, and free chemicals that are safe for the body and for the earth. It usually comes with wonderful- smelling soap, shampoo, and conditioner bars. Gift a bundle of natural and earth-friendly bath products for your mom in the Mother’s Dat so she can pamper herself after a tiring day.

Essential Oils

Consider essential oils as an eco-friendly gift as a Mother’s Day gift for your mother. She can use the oils in her beauty products or diffuse them for aromatherapy. There are kinds of oils that can aid some issues for the body. So, you can choose essential oils which you think your mother will enjoy using it.

Reusable Facial Cleansing Pads

Using single-use facial cleansing cotton to remove makeup or clean the face can be wasteful. Why don’t you introduce your mom to using a reusable facial cleansing pads as part of her makeup tools? It can be used many times and makes less trash from single-use facial cleansing cotton.

Reusable Shopping Bags and Produce Bags

Plastic waste is a serious problem we face these days. Going to the grocery store often means using a bunch of plastic bags and plastic produce sacks and then throwing them away shortly after. Gifting a bundle of reusable shopping bags and produce bags as a Mother’s Day gift is a great way to show your love for mother and mother earth at the same time. Your mother will take the reusable bags with her to the market, food store, or anywhere else she shops.

Water Bottle

Buying a drink in a single-use plastic package can increase the amount of plastic waste globally. Changing the habit of bringing a reusable water bottle will help to reduce plastic waste. Introduce the plastic-free movement and reusable water bottle trend to your mother by gifting a stylish water bottle. Encourage her to bring the bottle wherever she goes to be more eco-friendly.

Cook a Veggie Meal

Mother’s Day is a special day for moms. You can serve her a special dish as a gift for Mother’s Day. Cook her a nice vegetable or vegan meal! Eating more vegetables and reducing meat consumption is healthy for the body and it is also one of the most effective ways to combat climate change.

Gift a Tree

Gifting a tree to your mother is an extraordinary gift to celebrate Mother’s Day. You can give her an alive tree planted that contributes to improving the environment and empowering the local community where it is planted. A gifted tree is planted around degraded areas in Central Java and West Java, Indonesia to prevent some of the environmental issues, like erosion, flooding, dry soil, clean water shortages, and more. At the same time, the tree will also improve the local community livelihood through fruit and result from the tree.

Learn more to know how you can gift a tree for your mother. Click here: Give Trees as a Gift to Your Loved Ones

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