Holiday Gifts for the Globe

As Sam Champion travels across America to show you the biggest, best, most over-the-top holiday displays, he'll also provide tips on how you can make your trees, decorations and gifts as eco-friendly as possible.

(ABC News)

So check in daily for the "GMA Gifts for the Globe" tips.

Coeur D'Alene, Idaho — Biggest Holiday Tree in the World

Tip: Deck the Halls With LED Lights

More than 1 million lights turn Coeur d'Alene into a dazzling holiday wonderland, and starting this year, the resort has turned to LEDs, or light emitting diodes, to make everything glow. LED lights reduce energy usage by an amazing 90 percent!

Unlike incandescent lights, LEDs are manufactured utilizing tiny solid-state chips similar to the ones used in computers. Also, LED lights last much longer and consume a fraction of the energy, which leads to greater savings for years to come.

The U.S. Department of Energy reports that if all conventional incandescent Christmas lights in the country were replaced with LED lights this season, annual energy savings would total 2 billion kilowatt-hours — enough energy to power nearly 200,000 homes for an entire year.

If every U.S. home replaced its five most frequently used light fixtures with energy efficient lighting, we would save close to $8 billion per year in energy costs and prevent greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to that produced by 10 million cars.

Each year an estimated 600 million fluorescent lamps are disposed of in U.S. landfills, amounting to 30,000 pounds of mercury waste. It only takes 4 mg of mercury to contaminate up to 7,000 gallons of freshwater, meaning that the 30,000 pounds of mercury thrown away in compact fluorescent light bulbs each year is enough to pollute nearly every lake, pond, river and stream in North America.