Valentine’s Day has become all about showering those you love with candy, flowers and cards. This year try adding a little green to this traditionally red and pink holiday to show your love for the earth.
Tips for all gifts:
Whatever you are buying this Valentine’s Day, try to buy local. Supporting locally owned business puts money back into your community and reduces the impact on the environment by shrinking the number of miles the product travels to reach you.
Eco-Classroom Cards and Treats
- Make your own valentine cards with a card kit
- Buy recycled Valentine’s Day cards
- Try these recycled crayons
- Attach Yummy Earth Organic Lollipops to your valentines.
Cards
- Send an e-card.
- Make your own valentine cards using recycled items around your home and things from nature. This takes a bit more effort than purchasing the store bought cards-but if you have the energy, go for it
- Recycle all those cards once they have been read.
Flowers
- Valentine’s Day marks the biggest shopping day of the year when it comes to chocolate and flowers. Look for the Fair Trade and organic certification on your chocolate and flowers.
- Flowers are a predictable and loved Valentine’s Day gift. But you can add a green twist to the conventional bouquet of flowers by giving a potted plant or flowers to those you adore.
Chocolate
- Buy organic and Fair Trade treats. Check out the yummy chocolate treats that Micaela over at Mindful Momma and Helga at Live Green Mom agree on for Valentine’s Day.
- Make your own chocolate treats to share using organic, fair trade chocolate, organic nuts and other candies.
Other Gift Ideas 
- One of my favorite gift ideas is a DIY Valentine’s Fruit Sticker. Just download the PDF file onto sticker paper, peel off and stick on the fruit. Perfect for a surprise Valentine in a lunch box or brief case.
- Give the gift of a Lovers Essential Oil Kit from Mountain Rose Herbs-15% off for the month of February.
- Make a donation to an environmentally-friendly organization in honor of your loved ones.
Why not treat every day like Valentine’s Day? Each day is about all the small stuff-the small gestures and every day gifts that show you care for those you love and the earth you live on.
What eco-friendly ideas do you have for Valentine’s Day?
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*Disclosure: There are a few Amazon affiliate links in this post. If you use them it will put a few pennies in my pocket-thanks!
**Top photo used under Creative Commons from Dave Parker
Love these ideas! I saw the fruit stickers somewhere else but didn’t realize you could download and print them! So doing this for the kids.
I have been married for 24 years and we don’t celebrate Valentine’s because I disagree with being commercial and like to do nice things when I feel like it, not when I’m “expected” to. I agree to be different and green, year round, especially after living in Belize for a year and living frugally.
I love the fruit stickers too-what a clever idea. Any other valentine ideas to share?
Like you, we don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day at home. We are encouraged by the schools to celebrate it in the classrooms. So every year i struggle with trying to make the valentines more “green”. Usually, due to lack of time and having 3 kids that need to bring them in, we resort to store bought valentines. This year we are attaching tooth brushes to my 7 year old’s valentines (his request). I love how you said you do nice things when you feel like it and not when you are expected-i really wish that is how we could all live, not dictated by Hallmark.
Making Valentine’s cards for the classroom is really a great idea. Especially since I’m sure they get tossed out as soon as they make it home. If you’re going to toss the cards, I would hope people would at least head them into their recycle bin.