You can find many items in excellent condition and much cheaper second-hand. This is especially true for toys: because children grow up quickly, the second-hand market is full of recent things, sometimes even resold in their original packaging. Beyond that, it’s also ideal for offering books, clothes, sports equipment, decorative items, leather goods, and jewelry to make the holidays greener this year. Let’s see closer below.

Digital and household appliances: long live refurbished products!

Computers, smartphones, household appliances, game consoles… The refurbished market offers an increasingly wide choice. Buying a reconditioned product is more economical and ecological. Cleaned, reset, revised, and checked by professionals; they are also under warranty! Like any purchased product, the legal warranty is 2 years (no need to produce proof of defect during the first year).

Lightening Santa’s bag: The top 3 gifts given at Christmas:

textiles 39%;

toys 19%;

books 18%.

To please is to give a gift that pleases; it is unnecessary to provide a mountain of gifts that will be little or not used.

Some ideas

The useful gift

Storage boxes, gourds, books, plants for the garden, soaps, you can bet on what will always be useful, or on what can be eaten (baskets filled with local organic products or fair trade chocolate) or on your creations such as Christmas cookies, jams, make-up remover cloths…).

The eco-friendly gift

You can choose a zero-waste kit or a worm composting machine to place on the balcony, in the garden, or the kitchen. Small worms will eat your kitchen waste and offer excellent natural fertilizers for all your plants. It is an original, ecological, and helpful gift!

The dematerialized gift

You can combine the useful with the pleasant by offering a sewing or crafting course or a discovery weekend by train and in an eco-place.

The feast, the new formula

Even if we want to treat ourselves, it is important to cook in reasonable quantities so as not to throw away a lot of food. Today, tons of food is wasted during the holidays.

Good anti-waste advice:

• Ask your guests what they would like to eat.
• Prepare your menus in advance.
• Draw up a shopping list before making your purchases.
• Adjust the quantities to the number of guests.

Two menu suggestions for an ecological Christmas

Vegetarian menu

Starter: seasonal vegetable pie (carrot, beet, leek, parsnip, broccoli).

Main course: mushroom risotto, smoked tofu, and Fourme d’Ambert cheese.

Dessert: roasted pear with orange.

Menu with poultry

Starter: warm goat cheese and honey puff pastry.

Main course: wok of seasonal vegetables with Gâtinais poultry.

Dessert: homemade praline log with hazelnut slivers from the Périgord.

The homemade Christmas tree

What if we made our own tree? With recycled, natural and untreated materials… you can do wonders! Like a wall tree made of branches and rope or with a LED light garland (that you only turn on at night, of course!). Just as flattering as the traditional tree and ideal for small spaces.

And if you insist on a natural tree, choose one with an environmental label.

A 100% natural decoration

Christmas decorations are generally renewed every 5 years or so. Why buy baubles, garlands, and other plastic decorations when nature is full of treasures? A little collection on the ground in the forest or a park (do not cut branches on the trees), a little creativity, and that’s it! Softwood branches, ivy, mistletoe, pine cones…

Garland lights? Modern and sober

On average, Christmas lights stay on for 178 hours. For a magical Christmas, choose LED bulbs that consume less energy.

Beware of light decorations adapted for the outside, more powerful, which consume nearly three times more energy than those surrounding the living room tree. And for even more savings, opt for versions with built-in timers or solar sensors (for outdoor use) without forgetting to turn them off before bed.

Wrapping without gift wrap

Tons of gift wrap are consumed every year during the holiday season. How can you resist? You just have to find alternatives to be in the good books of the planet:

avoid metallic and shiny gift wrap that cannot be recycled;

choose gift paper with an environmental label;

keep the gift papers and sleeves to reuse them next year.

Want to stand out and be trendy? You can wrap your Christmas gifts:

in newspaper with a pretty bow;

in fabric, like a Japanese Furoshiki, or in a fabric pouch recovered from old clothes, sheets, and curtains. It will be necessary to know a little bit about sewing if you want to make them yourself;

without anything, and that, without altering the magic with a pretty Christmas box reusable for several years.