Toss the Tinsel: How Residents of Dublin Ranch Homes Can Make Their Holidays More Environmentally Friendly.

As the Broker and President of a start-up real estate marketing company called Lifestyle Real Estate Services, “Green Initiatives” are something I think about a lot. It’s funny — real estate seems to have a reputation for cheesy sales people driving huge, gas-burning cars and working in offices that use a tree’s worth of paper each day. In the effort to do things differently, I’ve become quite interested in green initiatives. We drive cars that are smaller, “ULEV”s (that stands for Ultra Low Emissions Vehicle) and we are working on making our work paperless with on-screen signing technology by ZipLogix. What in the world does all this have to do with the holidays? Well, let me tell you…

I’ve had the opportunity to do a lot of learning about a lot of different things, and did you know that holiday trees can be recycled? That’s right! Your holiday tree can be picked up by our garbage company (Amador Valley Industries) and, free of charge, made into mulch. There are only two things that will prevent that from happening — the first is if you have the tree “flocked” so that it looks like it has snow on it. The second, and this was my mom’s favorite thing to do with our tree when I was a kid, is to put tinsel on the tree in the form of “icicles” or any other kind of string metal. If you do either, your tree will end up as landfill, and an opportunity will be lost to recycle it.

If you are looking to replace strings of lights that you use inside or outside of your Dublin Ranch home, take a look at the new LED light strings currently being carried by Lowes and Target. They are a little more pricey, but they use only 33% of the electricity used by regular incandescents. You can get them in the classic “bulb” shapes like my dad used to hang on the house when I was a kid, and if you don’t mind paying for them they have some pretty neat options that change colors, or icicle ones that appear to “drip” with light — something you probably have to see to appreciate.

What have you done to “green up” your family’s holidays or your Dublin Ranch home? Have you tried any of the “Tree Free wrapping papers” on the market or purchased an organic turkey from Sprouts? I’m always interested to hear new ideas and the Real Estate Team at Dublin Ranch Lifestyle would love to hear from you!