Christmas is getting even closer and a huge number of people will have already begun their Christmas shopping. Although we all enjoy the holiday season, mainly for gifts we receive and the huge amount of food we tend to consume, it’s not a good time for the environment.

Alongside the huge amount of food and gifts we buy also comes a great deal of wrapping and packaging. The actual contents of the wrappers also have a negative effect on the environment, especially the manufacture of them.

Don’t fear though, if you’re trying to be as eco-friendly as possible, there are a number of things you can do to try and make your Christmas have less of an impact on the environment.

Shopping for your friends and family is a difficult job by itself, but trying to shop for eco gifts is even harder. To give you some ideas, here are some great ethical gifts.

With everyone having a heightened awareness for the environment, a huge amount of eco-friendly and recycled gifts have sprung up. Obviously bathroom storage or recycled tableware are not great as Christmas gifts, however, there are many others that would be perfect. For everyone, from gardeners to brandy drinkers, there are gifts such as recycled gardening tools or recycled brandy glasses that make great Christmas gifts.

As for gifts for children, unfortunately there are not many eco gifts out there for older kids. However, if you have slightly younger children, you can find some amazing fair trade soft toys or even solar powered wooden games that all kids would love.

There are some brilliant shops offline and on that sell a huge range of eco-friendly products.

The final thing to help the environment comes right at the end of your Christmas shopping, the present wrapping. Although you may think you can’t do much about it, unless you just leave the presents un-wrapped. But there is. Because wrapping paper is simply paper, it’s very easy to recycle, this means that a large number of retailers have started to sell recycled wrapping paper. Also, once the big day as passed, make sure you recycle all of your empty wrappings.