Gifts
Give a gift certificate to one of Park Slope’s wonderful restaurants. Give a membership or contribution in a friend or loved one’s name to Brooklyn Museum (www.brooklynmuseum.org ), or Brooklyn Botanic Garden (www.bbg.org ), or plant a tree in Prospect Park (www.prospectparkalliance.org/support/commemorative_giving) .
Patronize our fine Park Slope shops. Look for gifts that are durable, energy efficient and with minimal packaging. Choose gifts that require rechargeable batteries and that are not made with tropical woods like teak, rosewood or mahogany. And lastly, go shopping with a reusable cloth shopping bag.
Gift Wrap and Cards
Consider using old maps, outdated subway maps, sheet music, scarves, leftover fabric, magazine pages and comics pages for gift wrap. If you do buy gift wrap, make sure it’s made from recycled paper — Lion in the Sun (www.lioninthesunps.com) is one shop that sells recycled cards as well as gift wrap.
Re-use last year’s greeting cards by cutting off the message section, punching a hole in the front, and using as gift tags.
Christmas Trees
Use LED lights on your Christmas tree. Recycle old jewelry, small toys, greeting cards, cookie cutters and ribbon as tree decorations. String popcorn, cranberries, pretzels, buttons or pinecones.
Holiday Parties
Rent or borrow glassware, plate ware and flatware rather than using the throw-away kind.
Patronize our wonderful farmers’ markets at Grand Army Plaza, Bartel-Pritchard Circle and JJ Byrne Playground. Food grown locally means less energy has gone into processing, packaging and transporting food to your table.
After the Holidays
Recycle fruit and vegetable leftovers, tea bags and eggshells at the Grand Army Plaza Greenmarket’s GrowNYC Compost Collection site, Saturdays, 8 am to 3:30 pm.
Recycle paper gift wrap and boxes.
Lay branches of your holiday tree over the soil in your tree pit or garden to help prevent erosion and compaction of the soil. Then, recycle your tree at Mulchfest, co-sponsored by the Prospect Park Alliance and the Park Slope Civic Council, on Saturday, January 11 or Sunday, January 12, 10am – 2pm, at the Third Street entrance to Prospect Park or the Park Circle at Prospect Park Southwest and Parkside Avenue.
Happy Holidays!