In this edition
This month we're all about the festive season!
Whether you’re celebrating Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, the Winter Solstice or any other holiday over the next month or so, we’re offering lots of hints and tips to make your holidays more friendly.
Find out more after our news round-up below – and don’t forget to read our spotlight on Festive Tree Hire.
 In case you missed it
This year sees the Bulmershe School’s catering get a little bit greener with the installation of new solar panels across the roof of the building in which the kitchen is based.
Expansion works at the Winnersh Triangle park and ride have temporarily reduced the available spaces in the car park. Whilst these works continue, Reading Buses will be temporarily moving the park and ride service to the all-new Thames Valley park and ride located in Earley.
Residents of Wokingham borough are being urged to share their views on a revised growth strategy for the local plan, which not only sets out where development should go, but also includes protection for local green spaces.
We held our second annual youth climate conference, free to attend and open to all secondary school pupils across the borough.
Cyclists of all abilities can mark the countdown to Christmas by taking part in an exciting seasonal riding scheme.
An ambitious vision to improve local bus services and help them recover from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been announced.
Winter conditions can be bad for our health, especially for people aged 65 or older, and those with long-term health conditions. But help is here to keep you warm and well.
Dozens of electric vehicle charging points are set to be installed across Wokingham borough in a bid to reduce its carbon emissions and tackle the climate emergency on a local level.
In celebration of National Tree Week, we are launching a pilot Garden Forest Scheme, which is part of its aspiration to becoming a net-zero carbon borough, and invites residents to apply for a tree, or trees, for their own garden.
 Week one
You can't avoid it any more - December is only days away, the shops are blaring out Christmas music and everything is being mulled. What can you do this week to prepare for a more sustainable festive season?
Advent calendar
If you haven't already bought one, a re-usable Advent calendar is a great idea to cut down on waste year on year. If you have a disposable one, the cardboard and plastic innards can be recycled in your green bag.
Gifts
Unless you're one of those organised few who has their presents bought, wrapped and labelled, you might be wondering what to buy for friends and family. Take a look at our sustainable gift ideas and remember to shop local where possible.
The Ethical Consumer has great guides for what to buy and what to avoid, as well as rating popular brands by how environmentally friendly they are.
Greetings cards
We love to keep in touch with people, especially over the holidays, when we have the glorious 'red robin' land on our mats tucked in a card.
How about re-thinking your cards this year and send an e-card instead?
If you still want to send a physical card, make sure they have the Forest Stewardship Council logo, meaning the paper was sustainably produced, and avoid ones covered in glitter as these can't be recycled
 Week two
Planning the feast
A massive three quarters of us struggle with eating all the food we buy for the festive season and the UK throws away 2 million turkeys, 74 million mince pies and (look away all the cheese lovers out there), 2 million kilograms of cheese.
Make sure you only buy what you need over the coming break. You can always top up if you need to.
Christmas jumper day
Christmas jumper day is a tradition in many homes and workplaces, and you don't have to be a Scrooge and not take part.
Buying a new jumper each year is not cost effective, or good for the environment, particularly as they won't get much wear. Instead, buy second hand, swap with a friend or get creative and add some bling to a jumper you already have.
Decorating the house
The festive season is a time when we can go all out with glitter and sparkle, nothing is off limits or too tacky.
Baubles and tinsel can't be recycled, so the best thing is to look after what you have and use year on year. Alternatively, you could forage for natural materials to make your own decorations, which can then be composted after the big event.
When it comes to fairy lights for your tree and home, make sure you are using LED bulbs as these are much better environmentally. Also invest in a couple of timers, so that your lights aren't left on all the time.
And instead of buying a tree, how about renting one from someone like Festive Tree Hire? You can have the same tree year after year and more information is below.
 Week 3
The founder of the feast
If you aren't one of the super-organised who has had their Christmas delivery slot booked since January 2, then you may be thinking about where to stock up on your goodies.
Shopping local is key, such as at your local butchers and green grocers, as this not only reduces food-miles, but also supports local businesses, win-win!
Where possible, opt for organic foods and free-range eggs and meats. You could even try swapping your meat for vegetarian or vegan options, as the amount of meat we eat has a huge impact on the environment.
Chocolate
Many of us will be eating a huge amount of chocolate in the next few weeks, from Chocolate Oranges to selection boxes to tins of Quality Streets.
Make sure that you recycle all that you can from each. The foil can be balled up and put in your recycling, as can carboard packaging. Selection boxes can be harder to recycle, so consider putting your own together.
When each last crumb is finished, you can pop the tub or tin that your chocolates came in in your recycling bag.
 Week 4
Wrapping paper
By now you should have all your presents bought and ready to wrap (I'm looking at you, Christmas Eve at the petrol station gifters).
When it comes to presents, try and use wrapping that is either reusable or recycleable. To be recycleable, it needs to be free from glitter and pass the 'scrunch test'.
As an alternative to wrapping paper, you could use fabric, a reusable shopping bag, old maps or newspapers, jars or flower pots.
Crackers
Crackers are to Christmas dinner what pigs are to blankets, but often they aren't recycleable and contain a lot of waste plastic.
Opt for crackers that you can recycle most components of and that contain gifts that are usable by the recipient.
Alternatively, you could make your own, personalised crackers and hats, cutting down on the waste and making sure you are using recyclable or reusable materials.
Recycling
As long as it's been cleaned out, the foil tray you use to roast your turkey can be put in the recycling. re3, our waste and recycling contractors, have lots of information about what can and can't be recycled on their website.
 Week 5
Recycle, recycle, recycle
Every December we will use 300,000 tonnes of card packaging, enough to cover Big Ben almost 260,000 times!
Due to the dates that Christmas Day falls on this year, there will be no change to your normal waste and recycling collection dates.
Although not everything can be put into your green bags, that doesn't mean that it can't be recycled. Clink your way to your local bottle bank to dispose of those bottles of sherry and the dusty bottle of Baileys you finally finished after bringing it back from Tenerife 15 years ago.
All broken or unwanted electrical items can be taken to our recycling centres.
Please Sir...can I have some more?
If your festive food shop did looked like you were a contestant on Supermarket Sweep, look up some recipes, such as on the BBC Good Food website, to make the most of your leftovers. Turkey curry anyone?
Many foods can also be frozen to use at a later date, such as cheese, cooked turkey and vegetables (they may lose a bit of texture, but are great in stocks and soups).
If they really are scraps that you can't use up, dont forget to use your food caddy!
Unwanted gifts
We've all received those 'thoughtful' gifts that aren't quite to our taste. Once you've made your Oscar worthy gift acceptance speech and scribbled out your thank you notes, consider re-homing them, such as selling through second hand sites or donating to a local charity shop.
Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree
If you have a real Christmas tree, this should be recycled. If you are registered with the garden waste scheme or have purchased garden waste bags, please chop your tree up and pop it in there for collection. Alternatively, take it along to one of our recycling centres.
If you'd like to take the hassle out of recycling your tree, whilst supporting a good cause, you could use Just Helping's Christmas Treecycling scheme, who will collect and recycle your tree in return of a minimum £10.50 donation to a local hospice.
...Hello 2022!
As you start to see the New Year in, you may be thinking about resolutions for next year. Or at least, until mid-January. So why not make it a New Year’s resolution that can help save the planet? Our next newsletter will have some ideas, from the small to the large, for what you could do in 2022.
 Spotlight on Festive Tree Hire
Can you tell us about what you do?
We are a family-run business (three generations with a fourth on the way!) running an eco-friendly Christmas tree rental service. We started in 2019 with just 49 trees being hired out.
Our family are qualified tree surgeons and have been for over 30 years, so we are very knowledgeable and totally geared up to looking after trees. We absolutely LOVE Christmas and so it just all fell into place as the natural progression to do our bit to reduce our carbon footprint and offer a “greener” solution than cut Christmas trees.
How does it work?
We offer the hire of living, pot grown Christmas trees, that go to 'Christmas families' to be enjoyed over Christmas. Once the festive season is over, our trees come back to 'our family' so we can grow and nurture them for rest of the year.
Each tree is tagged and registered to its Christmas family so they can have the same tree back each Christmas if they wish.
We have a specially designed delivery/collection vehicle (called Magi) who plays a little tune as we arrive! We deliver for free within a 5-mile radius of our premises.
How do you keep your carbon footprint down?
Our real living trees can be enjoyed without the worry or mess of needle drop, and of course they don’t end up in landfill like cut trees do! We tend to our trees virtually every day which include watering, re-potting when appropriate, feeding, and turning to ensure the best health and optimum shape.
This year we collected new stock direct from the farm in Wales using our own vehicle. This means we are reducing our carbon footprint as the trees went from farm straight to us. In previous years we used a courier service but our trees went from farm to two different depots before they reach us! – this is not what we are about at all.
We are keen to keep our carbon footprint as low as possible and so we have started to grow baby trees here at home meaning those trees will have almost Zero carbon footprint! We produce our own soil/compost which we have generated from our tree surgery business. We collect rain water to help water the trees and we use Solar panels to run our watering systems.
What is coming up next?
We are currently in talks with another local business who supply Eco products and we hope to be able to offer eco-friendly Christmas Paper/wrapping, tape and hopefully eco Christmas Crackers too!
 Festive Update
There'll be a slightly longer gap to our next update as we pause our email newsletters over the festive break.
You'll get your next Climate Emergency update on Thursday 6 January, then it will revert to its four-weekly Monday schedule.
We'll still be sending updates out on rubbish and recycling so you can keep track of bin day and recycle as much as possible during the holiday. Sign up using the button below.
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