Hello Hello,

Tia and I are back with our last sustainability challenge for the year. It is that time of the year – when fun & festivities are in the air. While a huge part of the world is busy with Christmas celebrations, additionally in India – it is the wedding season! I’ve spent the last few days wedding hopping and boy, is that exhausting. Tia and I were discussing our final sustainability challenge for 2021 (we’ve done a few together this year) and decided to make it a challenge everyone can par take in. The challenge is ’12 days of sustainability’ which borrows from ’12 days of Christmas’. Tia proposed the idea of having 12 sustainability related festive challenges that can be done across this month. We tweaked the idea to make it a fun game of BINGO. Below are the challenges divided into 4 rows. The goal is to do any 3 in a row which gives you BINGO! We hope you’ll join us on this challenge and par take in our effort to be more sustainable. The goals are related to Christmas, New Year’s and weddings to have an array of choices for you to choose from.

Here are the challenges explained-

1. Repeat an old outfit to any festivity/wedding/event this month – Pick any outfit that you’ve already worn and change up how you style it and wear it to any event this month. 
2. Ditch store-bought wrapping paper – Wrapping paper is not very environmentally friendly. While there are some choices that can be recycled, normally store-bought wrapping paper can’t be recycled because of all the glitter and plastic on them. Opt for wrapping your gift in normal paper, old greeting cards, magazines or newspapers, or even fabric like a scarf (that could be part of the gift!) 
3. Go vegan for 5 days this month – Tis the season for binge eating. A lot of festive food include meat and dairy – both industries are highly polluting industries. Go 5 days without meat and dairy to offset the excess that might happen thanks to the festivities.
4. Buy your Christmas dinner ingredients locally – We all have our food traditions when it comes to Christmas, and while you may not be able to get all your favourites from the local farmer’s market, try and get as much as you can from a farmer’s market or local farmer/grower. 
5. Donate any extra food/left overs – I know I’m repeating this point from my last post but festivities often lead to A LOT of food wastage. If you do end up with extra food, please donate the food to any homeless people that you see on the street. With temperatures getting colder, a warm meal would be a nice festive donation. 
6. Make a homemade gift instead of buying one- I’m always a huge fan of homemade gifts because they’re a lot more personal, and they are way more eco-friendly than buying from a big chain store or on Amazon. Pinterest is filled with some amazing homemade gift options, and if being crafty isn’t your strong suit, you can always bake some homemade cookies or treats because who doesn’t love baked goods around the holidays?
7. Donate old clothes/products you aren’t using –Black Friday/Boxing Day/New Year’s Eve sales leads to so much excessive shopping. Before you buy more, go through your wardrobe and home – and pick out items that you aren’t using anymore. Donate them to people that might be in need of those products. Especially donate winter wear/clothes to those in need.
8. Support local, small or family-owned businesses – If you are looking for new Christmas decorations, buy homemade ones from a Christmas market. Browse on Etsy if you need any more gift inspiration. Support local bakeries for your treats – there are so many ways to support local businesses this Christmas, which is far better than buying from a big store. (If you are in India, shop my brand of sustainable products here.) 
9. Use solar powered lights/decorations – If you are opting for lights or decorations that use electricity – opt for solar powered ones. They are easily available online and are easy to install and use. 
10. Choose an environmentally friendly gift – If you have to buy gifts (and Etsy didn’t work for you), you could give environmentally friendly seeds to plant, upcycled products, adopt an animal on WWF or get someone a voucher for an experience. I’d definitely opt for one of those last two – I’m going to try adopt a polar bear for Christmas on WWF this year!
11. Instead of exchanging gifts, exchange less used/unused clothes with friends – I know this doesn’t sound super exciting but is a great way to be sustainable and save money. We all have pieces in our wardrobe that we hardly or never use. Pick a few close friends and have an exchange of such pieces. You can make it more fun by having a secret Santa system and guessing later who got whom. 
12. Sustainable Christmas cards – While we all love opening a Christmas card, unless you’re like me and keep every one and pin them up all over your house, Christmas cards can be quite wasted. E-cards are a great solution to this, and there are some that will donate to charity with every card you send. I also love this idea of plantable Christmas cards, where you plant them in soil, the seeds grow and the paper decomposes.

We hope you’ll join us on our last sustainability challenge. We will be trying to tick off as many as possible from this list and we’ll share the results with you near the end of the month. Let us know how you did and we’ll include you in our final post! Happy 12 days of Christmas/Bingo to you! ❤

A big thanks to Tia for collaborating on this and keeping me company on my sustainability journey. She’s hosting Blogmas all month over at her blog, do go check out all the amazing posts she’s done and show them A LOT of love! ❤

If you haven’t already, check out my other latest posts –

• Weird Things I’d Pay For
• Mission 2024: Getting Healthy (Not Lose Weight)
• Female Friendships Vs Male Friendships: From A Woman’s Perspective
• Vision Board 2024: Goals, hopes & aspirations
• Benefits Of A Vegan Diet: Should You Join The Cult?