The Live Lightly Podcast

Jessica (00:00)
Hello everyone and welcome back to the Live Lightly podcast where we explore the connection between sustainability, health and everyday living. And for those of you who are new to the show, I want to welcome you and thank you for listening.

I'm so grateful that you found this community of like-minded busy moms who want to live in alignment with Mother Nature and leave our children a clean, safe planet, which will be able to support them in living long and healthy lives. For those of you who don't know me, I'm your host, Jessica Franklin. I'm also a busy mom, family health coach, and an expert in sustainable living and home detox.

And for this episode today, I am on my own for a solo, which I've never done before. Since launching the podcast back in April this year of 2024 on Earth Day, I have been blessed to be joined by guests on the show who I can speak back and forth with. So please bear with me as I stumble my way through flying solo on this episode today. With that being said, just a little quick reminder that I shared a healthier recipe for hot cocoa in this week's newsletter.

using some ingredients that kind of help bump up the nutritional value and lower the sugar content by a lot. And so if you haven't received that yet or tried it out, just this is your little reminder to go check your inbox that might be sitting there and also to give that a try this weekend with your loved ones while you're cuddling up and watching some holiday movies.

And for those of you who don't get my free weekly newsletter just yet, I just want to let you know that I will leave a link for you to sign up for it in the show notes,

Or you can just go to livelightly.eco, that's livelightly.eco, where you can also find every episode and you can sign up for the free newsletter under the free guide tab. You will also receive my free guide to sustainable and healthy living and home detox as a welcome gift, which I made for this community of busy moms like you. So I hope that you enjoy it.

okay, today I'm tackling a topic that affects all of us and might be a little surprising to you. Can you guess what it might be? For those of you out there who have joined me in previous episodes, you know that I enjoy tackling the never ending topic of plastic pollution and today is no different. However, I am actually going to be addressing the massive

amount of extra waste that is created during the holiday season alone. So all of it, plastic and all of the bigger things that contribute to the excess waste that ends up in our landfill during the holiday season. Because I feel that during this season of giving and gratitude, we can also show kindness to the planet by simply shifting our perspective to show a little consideration and love and kindness to our sweet mother earth.

who provides all of the resources for everything that we need and everything that we do. So with that being said, I'd love to explore the biggest culprits in excess holiday waste on today's episode and some shocking facts. And I will also share some easy ways that we can all do better this holiday season, myself included, because I'm definitely not perfect. I am still working at being a better citizen of the planet and living more lightly.

just hope that this podcast is something that supports you along your journey and makes the process a little bit more efficient and stress-free and pain-free than my process has been. I've been doing this for eight years and I would say that I'm probably like 75 % better than I used to be on all the different areas of creating waste and plastic use and just all of the things, right? Toxins in my home and just finding the sources and then

finding new ones. So it is a process. And I just want to remind you to not be hard on yourself and don't blame yourself. It's not our fault that we've been kind led to believe that everything that we on the store shelves and online that we purchase is good for us or good for the planet. So I just want to put that out there.

With all of that being said, let's go ahead and get into it. After the holiday festivities have come to a close, the aftermath of waste is a little hard to ignore. There's wrapping paper stuffed into trash bags and leftover food that's discarded. And of course, the poor little Christmas trees that are all left out on the curbside. All of this waste, and it's all additional waste, like waste that normally wouldn't be happening on a day to day because of the holiday season, it contributes to

an extra 25 million tons of garbage during this holiday season. And here's another staggering fact. According to the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, household waste in the US alone, in the United States alone, increases by about 25 % during the holiday season. And they're saying that that's basically starting at Thanksgiving and all the way to New Year's.

And this waste doesn't just disappear. Most of it ends up in landfills, which ends up leading to long-term environmental harm

because ultimately landfills emit methane, which is a greenhouse gas, and these greenhouse gases significantly contribute to air pollution and global warming.

and another little fun fact here is that landfills are the third largest source of human-related methane in the U.S. alone,

equating to 14 % of total methane emissions.

you can see why it's important for us to explore how to send less waste to the landfill during the holiday season and.

all year round, but we'll talk about that in the next episode. Let's just focus on the holidays today. And let's start by exploring and talking a little bit about the first source, which is gift wrapping and packaging. Americans throw away millions of pounds of wrapping paper each year, much of which isn't recyclable due to materials like plastic, foil, and glitter.

And wrapping paper is only the beginning. Along with this, an estimated 38,000 miles of ribbon, which is enough to wrap around the earth, is also discarded each year.

Additionally, boxes, bows, and plastic packaging contribute significantly to holiday waste.

And then let's not forget about the waste from shipping. With e-commerce booming and the rise of online shopping, online purchases generate nearly five times more packaging waste than in-store shopping due to oversized boxes and all of that extra padding, which are like those plastic air pillows that you'll see in a lot to fill up the extra space in boxes.

take a look now at a couple of facts regarding shipping material that I found.

and I'm going to be picking on one specific company because they are the largest producer globally of.

shipping waste and it's Amazon and there's also just the most information available on the internet right now about the kind of shipping and packaging waste that they create. So I'm not doing this to throw them under the bus. They could definitely do better

It's not like I'm completely innocent. definitely have reduced my dependence on ordering, but There's a time and a place. And now I order only the things that I absolutely cannot get somewhere else or cannot get somewhere else.

as quickly and really need it quickly. So again, I'm just doing better, right? As much as I possibly can, but I'm not perfect. So again, I'm not trying to throw Amazon under the bus, but here are the facts. In 2020, Amazon shipped over 4.2 billion packages, which is enough cardboard to wrap around the earth a hundred times.

and while cardboard is recyclable, contamination or improper disposal often leads it to the landfill instead of recycling facilities. And

now let's talk about the biggest culprit, plastic. According to a 2021 report published by the nonprofit Oceana.org, plastic packaging waste from the online retail giant Amazon ballooned to 709 million pounds globally in 2021, which is equivalent, they say, to the weight of some 70,000 killer whales.

And they also go on to state that that's an 18 % increase over Oceana's estimate of Amazon's plastic packaging for 2020, which indicates that this is a growing problem for the environment.

So what can we do about all of this holiday waste now that we know that it's a problem and what the largest sources are?

I'm going to say that it really just starts with some small intentional choices. And here are a few quick tips that I can offer to you. I shared this in my newsletter, but I'm going to go ahead and just talk about it a little bit,

non-physical gifts. I have a few examples of what that could be

And the first idea is to give the gift of health because health is our wealth.

this could be anything from buying a package at their favorite yoga studio, or maybe finding someone who is a local healer or energy worker, or a massage therapist that you can buy a gift certificate from.

There's all sorts of different things that you can do here if you know the person well enough to know what they would enjoy the most. And the next idea that I shared was to make a donation in your gift recipients in their name. And that is just a simple way that you can show them that you know what's near and dear to their heart.

and you can spread the love to other people and other communities that are in need at this time of year. it's nice to be able to give a gift, but sometimes people just don't need anything

and it's also going to generate a nice warm feeling in their heart, which I think is also highly therapeutic and having good feelings is also promoting mental and physical health and wellness. So that's kind of like giving the gift of health in a roundabout way.

And you can also just something simple if you need to do a little something special for someone and you just don't not quite sure and you know $20 gifts here and there add up to a lot and those $20 gifts are not super high quality and Oftentimes you're not even sure if it's something that they want or need and so instead you can plant a tree in their name

And I shared an organization and I honestly cannot remember what it is right now. I did this the other day with my son. He picked a couple of special friends that he wanted to give a little something to and he planted trees in their name. You do five trees at a time, so it's $5. And then the morning of the holiday, they send a little message saying, your friend planted five trees in your name and, happy holidays. And so,

I did that and I think it's called onetreeplanted.org, but I'm not certain, so I will definitely share that link in the show notes as well. And so that's a good idea for something just small that says, hey, I care about you

And so if you still want to purchase a physical gift, you can consider buying gifts from local businesses or artisans at farmers markets or any type of local market. You can also buy unique gifts at your local thrift shop and support whatever cause that they are. Like our local thrift store actually has a center that helps abused women and children.

And so if you can support a thrift shop with a nice cause like that, and then also just supporting local businesses and local artisans. All of those things are helping your local community and individuals

I think is a really nice way to give gifts, whether it's for the holiday season or even for birthdays or other special events. And as far as gift wrapping is concerned, if you are giving something that needs to be wrapped, you can just get creative. You don't need to go out and buy a bunch of new wrapping paper, which

probably can't be recycled because of all of the things that I stated before. And you can use materials that kind of like a reuse repurpose type material would be using a brown paper bag, or you could use materials like old fabric, you can use newspaper. I also have saved all of the paper bags and even a lot of the gift wrap from gifts in the past and bows and ribbons.

and I use those every single year for sure. Even the tissue paper, I try to like just fold it up nicely and neatly and reuse that as well in the gift bags because you know until they're ripped up or too crinkled, I think that you can completely reuse all of that and if you are buying something new too because you don't have any of these items around, just look for paper that is

made of recycled materials because then that will be recyclable. Ribbons and bows, would veer clear from those because they're just straight up plastic. And so maybe getting some jute twine.

It's very rustic looking and you can find some flowers or maybe a tree that you can just cut a little teeny tiny piece of the branch off of if you have one in your yard or maybe you have like some rosemary, you could put some rosemary sprigs or fresh lavender and just tie that up in your jute bow. And that just is kind of a nice classy look.

for replacing ribbons and bows. And finally, make sure that any waste you do end up with is properly disposed of and recycled if it can be. And if you're not sure, just check with your local recycling guidelines, especially for materials like wrapping paper and cardboard, because if they can be recycled, then great. But if they cannot be,

then you don't want to put them into the recycling bin because it really just bogs down your local facilities. And I think that cardboard just needs to be, and again, check with your local facility, but I think that I take all the tape off of mine because it's plastic. And also, I just think that it needs to be clean. So just keep that in mind, but also check in and make sure that that's true for your local recycling facilities.

Next thing that we're gonna take a quick look at is food waste. And I'm just gonna give a quick fact from the Natural Resources Defense Council. They estimate that 40 % of food in the US goes uneaten and during the holidays, the average household throws away about $150 worth of food. So that's a lot and there are just a few things that...

we can do because this doesn't just hurt our wallet, but it also adds waste to the landfill. Like we just pointed out, landfill waste produces greenhouse gases But also the resources that are used to produce and transport the food all the way to you are also then wasted.

And I'm just going to share a little quote from the USDA. According to the USDA, when food is wasted, so too is the land, water, labor, energy, and other inputs or resources that are used in producing, processing, transporting, preparing, storing, and disposing of the discarded food. Phew, that is a big statement. And if you just take a moment to pause.

Take a deep breath and think about that statement. It's a lot of resources that just go into the food that is on the grocery store shelf, And so I think that because it's so easy and we didn't really have to put a lot of time and energy in our, and all of these resources that do go into growing food and producing food.

that we didn't have to do any of those things, that we don't really always see it. So it's kind of like good to just hear it and then take a moment to like absorb and like really process that. And some tips to tackle this, just a few practical things that I can share is preparing meals leading up to the holidays that will clear your fridge for the leftovers and make room for whatever foods that you're going to be.

purchasing for your big feast and then also once those foods are prepared, you'll need to have room to stash all the leftovers in your fridge. And so planning appropriately for the number of people who are attending and then also encouraging your guests if you're hosting, this is all if you're hosting, right? Encouraging your guests to bring some containers with them so that they can take home some of the food and you're not left with

too much to deal with. And that will also help them have a day where they don't need to make dinner tomorrow night or the next night. And it's also kind of nice for you to have some leftovers for those next couple of days if you're hosting, because you just did a lot of work to prepare the meal. But you don't want to have more than you can handle. And only so much of the leftovers can go into the freezer. But after a couple of days, if you're kind of over it,

take what you can and freeze it, and then make one more meal that maybe can be a little bit creative, and finding a way to maybe have a recipe that's different using those foods. And right now with all of the creative people online who are posting and sharing on Pinterest or on Instagram or whatever social media feed that you prefer, I'm sure it won't be hard to find some.

great ways to repurpose that final holiday meal that you're just kind of over having. you kind of just want to, you don't want to waste the food that's left, but you also would like to have a different meal. So repurposing your leftovers into something new is a great way to deal with those last little bits. For Thanksgiving, I'll just share really quick what I did with the last bits of, well, I froze the rest of my turkey after day.

like two days after Thanksgiving, we are over turkey. That's three days in a row with turkey. So I froze the rest of the turkey and then with the rest of the gravy, cranberry, mashed potatoes and stuffing, I made a chili, with grass-fed beef and some vegetables. then what we did was I warmed up the mashed potatoes and stuffing and put it in the bottom of the bowl and then topped that with some gravy and some cranberry sauce and then with the chili and it was

so delicious. I've also made a pot pie with it and like a shepherd's pie with the leftovers. So, you know, those are just a few ideas if you're cooking with mashed potatoes and stuffing and gravy and things like that for this holiday season. But yeah, I think that by making just a few mindful changes in how we approach this holiday season and holiday seasons,

you know, also in the future, we can reduce waste and start some new traditions that are kinder to our sweet, dear mother earth. And I just want to say, whew, I made it. Yeah, a lot of editing, I think, to do. Well, maybe not as much as I think, but I actually have to leave right now to go get my son from school slash after school basketball practice.

And so it's perfect timing. I made it, I did it, So thank you so much for tuning in and bearing with me on my first solo episode. If you enjoyed this episode please share this or any other episodes that you love with your friends and.

co-workers and family members, whoever you think would enjoy the information and also want to be inspired to live a little lighter.

And if you are loving this podcast leave us a review on Apple Podcasts. You just scroll down to the five stars and hopefully click on five stars and then a little bit underneath that you can go to leave a review. And if you would just leave

a few kind words and let me know what you're enjoying and what you'd love to hear more of and just share your positive experiences I will be reading the reviews and I will be so so grateful to receive them. until next time, again, I'm your host Jessica Franklin and I am

Wishing you and your loved ones a happy, sustainable holiday season.