This holiday, go a little easier on the Earth

KANSAS CITY, Mo. - The holiday season is often about excess, whether it is food, drink, spending - or waste.

It has been calculated that Americans produce an extra 6 million more tons of waste between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day.

But the holidays are getting greener all the time as people pick up on some easy ideas to ratchet things back a little. And some available options - "green" turkeys, LED lighting displays, Web sites with advice - make that easier.

"It has a greater priority today than it did, say, 10 years ago," said Bob Lilienfeld, author and publisher of a Michigan-based newsletter called "Use Less Stuff," and Web site, use-less-stuff.com.

The nonprofit Kansas City group Bridging the Gap, for example, reports a dramatic uptick in the volume of material coming into the recycling centers during and just after the holidays.

Some tips:

Eating and drinking: There are many ways that people planning holiday feasts can be eco-friendly. Shopping for locally grown seasonal produce, such as sweet potatoes at a farmers' market, reduces the fossil-fuel energy spent in transportation.

The wastefulness of plastic shopping bags has been well-publicized. But paper bags actually require more energy to produce. Reusable bags are best, according to numerous environmental groups.

If the number of guests exceeds your place settings, you can buy paper plates and cups made with recycled content instead of plastic or Styrofoam. Cloth napkins are better than paper ones.

Serving wine? Look for bottles sealed with real cork instead of plastic. Cork is renewable, and the tree isn't cut down to get it. It also supports wildlife in cork forests as well as a troubled industry.

When it comes to the feast itself, Lilienfeld encourages people to think small. He cites Department of Agriculture data that Americans throw away an average of 170 pounds of food per person per year.

If you're flying out of town for the holidays, consider buying carbon credits to compensate for the tons of greenhouse gas your flight will produce - www.carbonplanet.com has information.

If you're staying home, Bridging the Gap and other advocacy groups say there are still plenty of ways to reduce your family's carbon footprint.

If you're planning to host a large party for family, friends, or the office, Bridging the Gap can offer green suggestions, including providing recycling bins. Information is available at www.kkcb.org.

Decorations: Americans could save 2 billion kilowatt hours of electricity a month during the holidays if everyone switched from incandescent Christmas bulbs to light-emitting diodes, a federal study shows. Other advantages to LED Christmas lights, widely available in stores: They last for years, don't overheat, and help save on household electric bills.

Then there's the Christmas tree. Is real better than fake? Most artificial trees are made of plastics and metals, which produce greenhouse gases. Most also are made in China, which means more energy burned in transportation. But artificial trees can be used for years.

The vast majority of Christmas trees sold in commercial lots are grown on tree farms, meaning no natural forests are cut down to produce them. But most of them end up in landfills. Environmentalists encourage people who buy real trees to have them chopped into useful mulch instead. Local governments provide annual tree drop-off sites.

Gifts and more gifts: There is also enormous waste in what we place under the tree. It has been calculated that Americans throw away more than 4 million tons a year in gift wrap and bags alone. Wrapping paper and ribbon can be saved for reuse.

Many of the gifts inside those packages are electronic or require batteries. The Environmental Protection Agency says Americans buy nearly 3 billion dry-cell batteries a year, and they contain heavy metals. The average person throws eight of them away every year.

Environmental advocates encourage people to buy gifts that don't require batteries, or at least to buy rechargeable ones.

And this being the electronic age, millions of cell phones and other gadgets will be replaced with newer models over the holidays.

Bridging the Gap reminds people that recycling centers will accept old cell phones, MP3 players, iPods, digital cameras, laptops, chargers, and batteries. For information, go to www.bridgingthegap.org or www.ecyclingcentral.com.

"For people who are new to the green scene, it's probably not going to be the first thing they're thinking about" this time of year, said Bridging the Gap spokeswoman May Evans. "For people who have been involved for a while, they're often thinking about it more at this time."