Eco-friendly ways to gift loved ones this holiday season

The holiday season is known as a joyous time of year marked by boisterous celebrations and quality time with family. When asked for additional ways to characterize the holiday season, few might say the weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day are eco-friendly.

The United States Environmental Protection Agency reports that household garbage can increase by as much as 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day. Such a spike may translate to an extra one million tons of waste in the roughly five-week period between the end of November and the start of a new year.

Waste might not be foremost on the minds of holiday celebrants, but there's no reason why the holidays cannot be festive and eco-friendly at the same time, even with respect to exchanging gifts. With that in mind, the following are some eco-friendly ways to gift loved ones this holiday season.

· Reduce reliance on single-use wrapping paper. Ecocenter.org estimates that roughly 4.6 million pounds of wrapping paper are used in the United States alone each year, and much of that occurs during the holiday season. Wrapping paper tends to be used once and discarded, and many wrapping papers are not 100 percent paper. That means they cannot be recycled. In addition, one pound of wrapping paper generates 3.5 pounds of carbon emissions and uses 1.3 pounds of fossil fuels. That's quite an environmental toll to pay for decoration. In lieu of wrapping gifts in traditional wrapping paper, the EPA recommends using recycled paper or newspapers.

· Shop local. Locally sourced gifts purchased from independent retailers likely won't have the same carbon footprint as items purchased from big box stores or online retailers. While the effects of transportation on a given item's carbon footprint is not necessarily substantial, items produced close to home and made with locally sourced materials make for more eco-friendly gifts than items shipped from afar and made with materials from faraway corners of the globe.

· Shop using reusable bags. Images of shoppers traversing malls with lots of large department store bags overflowing with gifts have endured for decades. But the EPA notes that thousands of paper and plastic shopping bags end up in landfills every year. But that's an easily remedied threat to the environment. When heading out on a holiday shopping excursion, shoppers can bring their own reusable bags to reduce their reliance on single-use bags that will ultimately end up in landfills.

· Shop for eco-friendly gifts. The very gifts that make it under the Christmas tree this holiday season can help cut back on waste production. An avid hiker on your holiday list can be given a reusable water bottle made from recycled materials. If a loved one loves to cuddle up on the couch over the winter, a blanket made from dye-free organic cotton makes a wonderful and eco-friendly gift. There's no shortage of eco-friendly products, and shoppers can prioritize such items when shopping for loved ones this holiday season.

Waste need not be a big part of the holiday season. When shopping for loved ones this year, shoppers can embrace eco-friendly practices and look for products with minimal carbon footprints.