Christmas Craft & Coffee Morning – A Hit!
Sustainable Kirriemuir held its 2nd Christmas Craft and Coffee Morning on Saturday the 4th of December at the Kirriemuir Parish Church Hall.
People of all ages came along between 10am and 1pm, to take part in a range of festive activities, designed to help reduce waste at a time when there is so much of it, and get us thinking about our consumption over the festive period. Activities included:
- Wreath making using branches victim to Storm Arwen!
- Tea light painting using fancy shaped glass jars; cleaned and upcycled.
- Plastic-free Christmas bauble making, using card, pens and wooden circles.
- Sustainable wrapping paper printing and gift tag making using old Christmas cards.
- Gift bag sewing using scrap fabrics and old card!
An amazing £295.38 was raised, with all proceeds going towards Sustainable Kirriemuir’s ongoing work.
We would like to say a big thank you to all of our volunteers and bakers; without you, events like this would not be possible! Also a big thank you goes to everyone who came along on the day; you make it worth it! Thanks to the Co-op Roods and Member Pioneer Tracey Inglis for donating goods for our coffee morning and allowing us to save some sad cyclamen, Gill from Gilart and Maylee from Bespoken from the heart, and finally, the Kirriemuir Parish Church for a great venue.
It is important to think about the impact of our gifts and Christmas activities, because a lot of waste is generated at this time of year. This year…
95 million Christmas cards will be sent, that’s over 13,000 wheelie bins full!
This year, send a digital card and recycle last year’s Christmas cards by using them to make your own gift tags and parcel embellishments.
154,000,000 pieces of plastic from Christmas crackers will end up in landfill or our oceans from the UK alone.
Buy plastic-free crackers, or make your own reusable ones (check out our YouTube Channel for a tutorial) and fill them with your own jokes and plastic-free presents!
19,000 miles of wrapping paper are used, that’s enough to wrap mainland Scotland’s coastline 2 and a half times! Most of this is disposed of by landfill.
Try some Furoshiki style wrapping (wrapping with fabric), make your own reusable gift bags or reuse brown paper from deliveries by carefully flattening it with an iron on very low heat!
Every year, we import more than 10,000 tonnes of gifts from China, with many of these gifts never used and eventually thrown out.
Buy local! There are lots of amazing gift and food shops right here in Kirriemuir. If you receive something that’s not for you, add it to our Facebook Swap Shop and share your resources within the community
Let’s all aim to have a greener Christmas, and source and create unique gifts and traditional Christmas items that are kinder to the environment.
