Are you still decorating your yard and home with incandescent holiday lights? The St. Louis County Health Department says it is time to make the switch to LED lights. Often, strings of incandescent lights are wrapped in a hard plastic coating of PVC to protect the wire. This coating can take up to 500 years to breakdown in our landfills. Furthermore, PVC is heat resistant and may contain metals such as tin, lead and cadmium which can become harmful once they make it into the ground.

Using LED lights for you holiday decorating and light displays has plenty of benefits. Consider the following facts about LED lighting:

·         LED lights last twice as long as incandescent lights – up to 20 years!

·         They use 1/10^th of the energy of traditional holiday mini-lights, which saves on your electric bill.

·         LEDs are cool to the touch reducing the risk of fire.

·         Their brightness does not fade over time.

·         LED lights are durable and harder to break than traditional lights.

·         They can withstand moisture, heat and cold.

·         LEDs are available at most hardware stores and home improvement centers.

Before you throw away those strands of incandescent Christmas lights, check with you local hardware or home improvement stores to see if any are sponsoring a collection/recycling mission for broken or non-functioning incandescent holiday lights. Some places even offer discounts on the purchase of new energy-efficient LED Christmas lights for each strand of old lights you recycle. 

So, go ahead and make the switch to LED Christmas lights. You’ll save energy, have a more environmentally-friendly holiday light display and save money on your electric bill.

This article brought to you by The HousePlanShop, LLC, the home of the best selling house plans from the best designers!

Tags: Christmas, Christmas lights, holiday desorating, holiday lights, LED lights, recycle

It is time to start a new holiday tradition. The Thursday before Thanksgiving is Use Less Stuff Day. Make a commitment or pledge to yourself to reduce your resource consumption during the holiday season.

Here are a few ideas:

• Don’t buy too many groceries or prepare too much food for a holiday gathering. If you do prepare too much, send leftovers home with guests or reheat them the following day for yourself. Try your best not to throw away usable food.
• Use less energy. Turn down the heat before a holiday party. The body heat of guests will keep the room warm, so lower the thermostat a few degrees.
• Have a recycling plan. Set up recycling bins to capture all the wrapping paper, gift boxes, bottles, cans, plastic cups, etc. Inform your guests and make sure they know what items to recycle and where to place them.
• Use fewer disposable paper products and eating utensils. If all your dinnerware, table settings and silverware must be matching sets, rent dinnerware, glassware and silverware for your holiday party. Otherwise, ask guests to bring their own and eliminate paper plates and plastic cups, forks, knives, etc.
• Use cloth napkins that can be washed and reused at your next holiday gathering instead of buying disposable ones and filling the trash can.

Go ahead and make the commitment to use less stuff. Tell your friends and family about Use Less Stuff Day and work toward an environmentally-friendly holiday season without sacrificing the fun and joys all of us look forward to each year.

For more ideas about Use Less Stuff Day, please visit www.use-less-stuff.com.

This article brought to you by The HousePlanShop, LLC, the home of the best selling house plans from the best designers!

Tags: energy efficient, go green, holidays, recycle, use less stuff day