Consider reducing your holiday purchases: You’ll save energy expended while shopping and every item you don’t purchase means less energy going into the production, packaging and shipping of that item.

Buy reusable, rechargeable batteries: Over 40% of battery sales are made during the holidays. Using and reusing rechargeable batteries will reduce your trips to the store to buy batteries and reduce the energy that goes into mining the metals, manufacturing the batteries and shipping.

Buy local and avoid over-packaging: As you are making holiday purchases, consider buying locally produced items (reducing the energy used for transportation and supporting the local economy) or gifts of services. Also, if an item includes excessive packaging, or the product can not be easily recycled at the end of its life you might want to consider giving a different gift.

Recycle your gift wrap: When using gift-wrap, buy recycled papers, which use 60% less energy to produce than virgin paper (and generates 95% less air pollution) according to Earth911.com and recycle and/or reuse the paper, gift bags and ribbons on the gifts that you receive.

Use LED Christmas lights: LED Christmas lights are now widely available and reduce energy consumption by 80-90%.

Lights out at 10:00 p.m.: Be sure to turn your indoor or outdoor decorative lights off overnight 6:00 – 10:00 p.m. are the prime visibility hours.

Set the thermostat lower during your holiday gatherings: With extra warm bodies, you can set the thermostat lower and stay just as cozy.

Cook efficiently: Resist the temptation to open the oven door and peek at your baked goods, which can reduce the oven temperature by up to 25 degrees. Consider baking several items at one time, and use the right size pan for your stovetop burner, which will also reduce energy waste by as much as 40%.

There’s no place like home for the holidays: A round trip flight from New York to Los Angeles produces 1,436 lbs of CO2 according to Terra Pass (this is about 6% of typical household energy use). If you can stay home, you’ll save energy.

*Tips for a greener Christmas taken from Kilowatt Ours Community (http://www.kilowattourscommunity.org)