For our very own 12 Days of Christmas, from December 1st to December 12th, we wanted to share 12 unique ways of having festive fun in easy and eco-friendly ways.
Here is the itinerary:
📜 Day 1: Make your own recycled wrapping paper
🎀 Day 2: Create mini Christmas trees using scrap ribbon
👘 Day 3: Learn fabric wrapping using the Japanese art of Furoshiki
🍋 Day 4: Rejuvenate your Christmas décor with dehydrated fruit
🥫 Day 5: Light up your home with mood lights using a ‘can-do’ attitude and upcycled cans
🎴 Day 6: Design personalised Christmas cards using leftover materials
☃️ Day 7: Build your own snowmen with empty plastic bottles
🚽 Day 8: Turn finished toilet roll into born-again Christmas décor
🍍 Day 9: Bring pinecones back to life as festive ornaments
🍶 Day 10: Transform jar lids into eco-friendly baubles
✨ Day 11: Shine bright and turn twigs or cinnamon sticks into stars
🌟 Day 12: Try out some origami and turn any leftover paper into more stars
Why not give yourself a challenge and try out each of the different eco-friendly craft activities each day in your run up to Christmas? Or combine activities together for a fun filled day of decoration making with loved ones? Not only will it be great fun in the cozy indoors for friends and family, but it will also reduce your waste, make your home look fantastically festive... and it will help out the planet along the way!
Feed Me Fairtrade: Continue the Festive Fun by Having a go at Making Peruvian Rice Pudding Inspired by CAES Piura
Why let the Fairtrade festivities end there? Head over to our YouTube channel to discover new and delicious recipes to try out at home which feature Fairtrade ingredients and take inspiration from the many producers we work with across the globe.
In Feed Me Fairtrade's latest instalment, our Partnerships Manager Sally shows us how to make Arroz con leche (rice pudding), a popular Latin American Christmas food that’s usually prepared in large quantities to easily feed big families. The idea to prepare this dish was inspired our Peruvian colleagues, who told us that rice pudding is a firm favourite in their homes at this time of year.
Meanwhile, the recipe for this seasonal staple draws inspiration from CAES Piura, a Shared Interest customer and co-operative whom process and export brown sugar from the cane sugar grown in the mountains of the Piura region of Northern Peru. CAES Piura is developing social and environmental projects, including a 3 year project that began in 2019, to improve members' family incomes by increasing the production and quality of their sugarcane fields. Have a go at this recipe by watching the video below.
An Eco-Friendly Community
Thank you for checking out our 12 tips for eco-friendly festive fun this Christmas. We each have a part to play in building a brighter future. Although it might not seem like reusing ribbon or upcycling tins can change the world, together, with our community of over 10,000 members, we can make a difference.
The producers we support across all corners of the globe are those most acutely and disproportionately affected by the changes to our climate. This is a fact we explore often in our member magazines, such as in QR 127 and QR 123.
By doing our bit to reduce waste and promote sustainability, we are also doing something much bigger: protecting producers, the planet and investing in a fairer world.
Please share this article if you found any of our tips helpful or interesting, so we can continue to grow our eco-friendly community.