California Center for Sustainable Energy

Wishing you a safe & sustainable holiday season

This is a wonderful time of the year – holiday cheer, New Year celebrations, old things ending and new beginnings. With all of the hustle and bustle, however, it’s easy to overlook our normal sustainable and green practices while we answer the urge to splurge.

There are many ways you can incorporate green ideas into your holidays from wise shopping and reusing wrapping paper to turning down your thermostat and using LED lights. You can find numerous websites full of energy-saving ideas and green tips. Just a few are listed below.

If you really want to green your holidays, there is one simple guideline to follow: Do more with less – less energy, less waste, less traveling, less packaging – while also reusing, repurposing and recycling. Just as an example, did you know the average household increases its waste disposal by more than 25 percent between Thanksgiving and New Year’s? Don’t let that happen in your home this year, and tell your family and neighbors that what they do to reduce waste and save energy helps us all.

I want to extend my personal thanks to everyone who contributed to CCSE this past year from our dedicated staff, interns and volunteers to our wonderful workshop leaders and attendees, rebate recipients and corporate partners. There are so many people who add to CCSE’s excellence!

We’ve come a ways down the long road to a sustainable energy future, but I urge you to consider what more you can do in 2010 to reduce your energy use and help others to realize the importance of doing likewise. But in the meantime, I wish you the very best this holiday season and suggest you take time to enjoy my favorite four F’s: friends, family, food and lots of fun. See you in 2010!

Holiday Tips Online

Here are just a few of the many websites where you can find helpful hints for a greener holiday season.

http://focusorganic.com/ultimate-green-christmas-holidays-guide/#tips

http://www.eartheasy.com/give_sustainchristmas.htm

http://greenliving.suite101.com/article.cfm/12_green_days_of_christmas

http://www.epa.gov/region09/waste/recycling/index.html

Continue reading December's newsletter.