With the holiday season upon us, we should all learn a few basic tips that allow us to be more eco-friendly and produce less waste!

• Reuse old boxes for presents. Already used boxes can be be great for packaging your gift because they can be reused more than once. Bring these old cardboard boxes back to life by making them more festive by using old pieces of wrapping paper and gluing or taping the scraps to the box. 
• Use fabric as wrapping paper. This holiday season, instead of filling trash bags with ripped up wrapping paper, try using fabric as wrapping paper. This way, you will be able to stop using unsustainable rolls of wrapping paper and be more environmentally friendly. You can also be creative by wrapping presents with old maps, the comics section of a newspaper. You can also use fabric such as a scarf, dish towel, bandana, or another cloth item.
• Buy energy saving lights for the holiday season. Swap the tradition incandescent lights for LED lights to decorate your house. LED lights use up to 90 percent less energy than conventional holiday lights. By Using LED lights, you can safe your family up to $50 on your energy bills during the holiday season!
• Shop online to save energy and fuel that you would use to travel from one to another, this will also save you money on gas.   
• Send your greeting cards electronically. Every year about 2.6 billion greeting cards are sent. Sending a greeting card electronically is the perfect way to reduce waste. Websites like Hallmark or Photobucket offers a selection of holiday greeting cards that allow for great personalization options for you and your family. If you prefer to take the more traditional route by sending cards through the mail, look for holiday cards printed out on recycled paper. 
• Give new life to old greeting cards by recycling the cards by cutting them into your favorite images and details from the cards . You can then turn these into gift tags or use them as decoration.

Christmas is still months away, but Nestle is already thinking about their seasonal packaging and going green for the holidays. In the past, chocolate makers have often been known for wasteful and unnecessary packaging, especially for special seasonal promotions. This is the new target to work on, and Nestle is going at it.

According to Food Production Daily, Nestle will be making all of its Christmas selection custom boxes fully recyclable. One change they made was removing the plastic inserts that held the chocolate bars in place and replacing them with a card presentation tray. This way, the chocolate can still be nicely displayed in the custom box and be easily recycled when you are finished with it. This is one step for Nestle to be more environmentally-friendly in their packaging to reduce waste and address the concerns of their environmentally-conscious customers.