The holidays can be fun and a pain, but they don't have to hurt the environment.

What's the perfect gift for your eco-conscious friend? Consider making a donation to an environmental non-profit in his or her name. Or, Environmental Defense suggests gifting carbon offsets. Your gift pays to reduce or remove global warming pollution.

Not into making donations? Gift products from environmentally friendly companies or products that are locally made and therefore don't use energy to be transported. Cat Scanner Renee Airo's blog, Shades of Green, looks at businesses that are going green. For instance, a great gift might be organic cotton t-shirts from Gap. The Cat Scan has also profiled a few Arizona-based companies committed to selling green products, such as Twig & Twill.

You can also just wrap your gift in a greener way. Between Thanksgiving and New Year's Eve, an extra 5 million tons of trash are thrown away, according to the Ecology Center. Don't create new trash by buying tons of rolls of fancy wrapping paper.

There's the time old tradition of wrapping a gift using yesterday's newspaper. The comics section makes for a fun and colorful wrapping paper. The Ecology Center also recommends using old maps, sheet music, magazine pages, lightweight wallpaper, or leftover fabrics. I'm thinking about looking for recycled plain paper and decorating it myself. If that doesn't appeal to you, eco-friendly wrapping paper and gift bags are available. Pristine Planet has a comparison page of gift wrap making it easy for consumers to look for environmentally friendly wrapping from various companies.

So as you throw yourself into your holiday preparations, remember, it's easy to gift greener.