Activating your Anatomy of Action for a more Sustainable Holiday Season
Holidays are a great time to connect with friends and family, take a well-earned rest, and experience new things. Many of the everyday actions that we built into our UNEP collaboration, the Anatomy of Action, are perfect to try out around the holiday time — not just because it can be an incredibly wasteful time (think of all the unnecessary and unwanted gifts, the wrapping, the traveling, the wasted food, the packaging of the food and the stuff, etc., etc.), but also because it fits into our method of working around habit disruptors.
Did you know we are each more likely to make changes to our lives when we already have changes occurring? When we are moving house, having a baby, or going on vacation, for example, these moments are so different from the norm that our brains are more ready and willing to take on all sorts of changes and adopt new behaviors. So, give some of these actions a shot this holiday season, and see if you can help design a future that works better than today!
FOOD
This is a holiday MUST! So much food is purchased, eaten, and wasted around the holidays, but there are many simple steps you can take to reduce your negative and increase your positive impact:
Protein swap from high impact to low impact by trying your hand at vegan potlucks, plant-based parties, and meatless main meals.
Get creative with your leftovers, and find ways of converting them into a new meal or composting (you can even just bury your food waste in your backyard if you have one!).
Give the gift of herb gardens or plant-based cookbooks to help find ways of supporting your friends’ and families’ adoption of more healthy and nutritious plant based meals.
STUFF
This is by far the biggest impact of the holidays! How much wasted, unwanted, needless stuff is purchased and then stuffed in drawers and cupboards over the gift-giving season? I shudder to think. Here are three easily-adoptable, stuff-reducing actions you can take:
Arrange a second-hand gift trade or experience extravaganza instead of doling out things you don’t know if people want or need.
Make something instead of buying more sh*t. Think beautiful preserves, your famous pasta sauce, or handicrafts — I even once made a DIY kids’ game that was the hit of the holidays!
Ditch disposables and go for a zero-waste approach, whether it’s free from packaging altogether or wrapped in newspaper, cloth, or other reusables. Make it a fun challenge in your family to see who can zero waste the most!
MOVE
Many people have to move places to see their loved ones or go on adventures over the holidays. Airports are packed, and the skies are filled with more people and thus, more Co2. Here are some simple tactics for getting places with less impact:
See if you can take a train to your destination over flying — consider it a more relaxed way of entering into the holiday time.
Arrange a rideshare system with extended family and friends if you have to drive to your destination.
If you have to fly, then find a way of offsetting your carbon, like by buying a tree for family members (and planting it, of course).
MONEY
We all spend way too much of it at this time of year, and what we do spend it on will have a huge impact on what is on the market next year and into the future! So, here are simple money impact hacks:
Instead of buying stuff, make an ethical investment for yourself or a loved one.
Divest from high-impact stuff, and opt for lower impact things (for example, swap tech for board games).
If you are in a cold place, turn down the heat and pull out those ugly Christmas sweaters! If it’s hot where you spend your holidays, then find ways of staying cool sans-AC.
FUN
This is the entire point of the holidays —- rest and relaxation, fun times with the people we love, and a break from work life (for some!). Here are a few fun-inducing, lower-impact actions you can take:
Try out a staycation by exploring somewhere closer to home.
Ask for gifts that help you stay curious, like books, games, and e-learning subscriptions.
Opt for time well spent over stuff-heavy experiences.
And remember to enjoy this process! Making changes and lifestyle swaps is about experiencing new things and being more courageous. Sometimes, change can feel a bit uncomfortable at the start, but that's the good thing about it: you can change, see what works, adjust, and then try again in different ways until it fits for you and your life. The actions we each take everyday have impacts, and we all have the power and opportunity to make more effective lifestyle choices so that the planet and all the people we share it with can have a better future.
Find out more about the many actions you can take to adopt a more sustainable lifestyle by checking out the UNEP collaboration we developed, the Anatomy of Action. And if you haven’t yet joined our LinkedIn group for creative changemakers, join us there and share your tried and true sustainable holiday hacks!
