Greening Your Holiday

When I started to explore tips and ideas on green gift giving and greening up the Winter holidays, I couldn’t believe the amount of information out there on this subject. Here are some of the sites and gift ideas that I liked that can also help reduce our impact on the environment.

Waste Less this Holiday Season

• Green Christmas Ideas: Celebrate Holidays in Less Commercialized Ways by Sandra Williams. This is a lovely article that has common sense tips on green gift ideas like "give an herb garden kit to a favorite gardener, make your own gift certificates that give someone a free hour of babysitting, a free lawn mowing, house cleaning, or create a cookbook with your family’s favorite recipes to treasure.

• Save energy by using LED lights. They use 90% less energy than incandescent bulb, are more energy efficient than compact florescent lights, and they are no longer very expensive. This LED light tip is via Michelle Carchrae’s article Green Christmas Traditions.
• Holiday eCards seem like they are slowly catching on instead of sending paper or photo cards. They’re free and considerably more environmental than conventional cards.  Yahoo! Greetings has a great listing of them for an astonishing array of holidays including Christmas, New Years, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and India Independence Day.
• Speaking of Hanukkah, find a cute Yahoo! Green article on making your menorah more environmentally friendly.
• Give and use rechargeable batteries. So many toys and gifts still use batteries! Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH) batteries are better than they have ever been. You can get quick chargers for them and they can be recharged 500 times. Find a good comparison of rechargeable vs. conventional consumer batteries at Z Battery. Their finding is that using one NiMH battery saves $100 compared to a regular non-rechargeable alkaline battery. A good solid NiMH charger and battery package is the Sony BCG-34HRMF4 Battery Charger and 4 AA NiMH Rechargeable Batteries.
• Kill A Watt EZ Electricity Usage Monitor is a wonderful gizmo that I'll probably have to get for my colleague Anna Jaeger. Salon.com  included this in a recent roundup of holiday gift ideas. It's a $35 device that allows you to see how much plugged-in devices rack up in energy charges. Find out exactly how much it costs you to keep that DVD player, phone charger, or iPod docking station permanently plugged in.
• Smart Strip Smart Energy Saving Power Strip is an affordable ($37), easy to use, energy saving device that auto-switches all the devices you plug in to it. When your computer turns off, the smart switch turns off everything else you want turned off at the same time. It pays for itself in saved energy costs in 10 weeks on average.
• Reuse is also a great way to lessen your impact this holiday season. Need some extra holiday decorations for the office party? Or that trendy gift for your neice? Instead of looking for all your holiday gifts and gadgets brand new from stores, check out your local Craigslist and Freecycle group to see if you can find what you need without having to add more to the consumer pile. And, it'd likely save you some money too.

To Tree or Not to Tree? That Is the Question.

The subject of what to do to have greener Christmas trees is itself overwhelming. In the great debate on which is more environmentally friendly: artificial verses cut Christmas trees. It looks like cut Christmas trees win. However, there's no debate that if your family or office opted to forgo the artificial AND the cut tree for a live, potted tree that can live in your office or home year-round, the environment would be thankful. A live tree in your office can beautify the natural vibe while also helping to clean the indoor air. No toxins, no cutting down living trees just to see them tossed later, and you've got a nice live plant to enjoy in what might otherwise be a drab office building.

The National Christmas Tree Association hosts a convenient, but clearly self-serving comparison between artificial and cut trees. Julie Deardorff who writes a blog for The Chicago Tribune has good, clear info on this topic as well. She finds the environmental case against artificial trees is pretty strong: They have a gigantic carbon footprint because they are usually made of petroleum and shipped from China; the pole and branches are primarily made of steel while the needles are made with polyvinyl chloride (PVC), also known as vinyl, or polyethylene (PE). PVC is not biodegradable and can't be recycled; if incinerated, the PVC in the trees emits dioxins and other carcinogens. The manufacture of PVC also creates dioxins and they are not recyclable, although they do last on average six years.

On cut Christmas trees, an estimated 40 million to 45 million trees were planted in 2008 in North America. The tree farms provide habitat for wildlife, remove dust and pollen from the air, and absorb carbon dioxide. Plus they are recyclable. Most tree farms plant one to three trees for every one that is cut. The branches and trees can be ground into mulch. Recycled trees have been used to make sand and soil erosion barriers and placed in ponds to create fish shelters.

The coolest Christmas tree program I've seen so far is in our own city of San Francisco. It's called Dreaming of a Green Christmas. The deal on this is that you order a 7-foot-tall potted tree from the city for $90 and pick it up downtown. You keep it for the holidays, then the city comes and picks it up from your house, and with cooperation with the nonprofit Friends of the Urban Forest, they plant the tree in the city where it will live on for years to come. The only thing some people don't like is the less traditional tree selection: small leaf tristanias, strawberry trees, New Zealand Christmas trees, southern magnolias — none of which are traditional Christmas trees, but do well in the Northern California climate. The program at publication date of this blog post is sold out for this holiday season.

Learn More

One of the great green holiday sites out there is Earth911 Green Your Holidays and includes a great Christmas tree and battery recycling listing. Also check out their 20 Tips for a Sustainable Holiday and their 8 Ways to Green Your Holidays. They also have a great article called The Gift of Giving Green which is worth checking out.

Finally, here's the gift I’m giving a bunch of people – the board game Earthopoly. This game is for ages 8 and up in which players become the caretakers of wondrous locations around the planet, then increase their property value by collecting carbon credits and trading them in for clean air. It's fun and can also enlighten others who play with you about being better stewards of our world.

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