I said it last year and I'll say the same thing now, screw "greening" your Christmas and make it sustainable instead
This post ran for the first time exactly one year and one day ago . It's even more true today than it was a year ago.
Someone despatched me what has to be the fourth or 5th listing of the approaches I can "inexperienced" my Christmas yesterday and I've about had it. To a one, every of these lists involved ways I ought to either spend extra money than I could otherwise on unattractive crap or new and ingenious ways for me to wear a hair blouse in public and thereby prove my "green" bona fides to passersby. Please.
Human civilization faces some very real and very pressing environmental issues. Left unchecked, a number of those have the capability to grow into outright crises and they need to be handled decisively and immediately. All of them may be traced to an American (and increasingly international) sample of consumption. It's not just a depend of amount of that intake both, it's greater a hassle of that intake's inefficiency.
The contemporary "green" movement was no doubt founded with the best intentions, but the more of its popular expression I see the less enthused about it I become. These Christmas lists I've been seeing are a terrific case in point. The problem is excess and inefficient consumption. So the solution cannot be more consumption. Buying a $75 Christmas tree ornament made from an old sock is still buying more unnecessary stuff. It's a more sustainable idea to just keep using the Christmas tree ornaments you already have.
The overpriced "green" trinkets and gewgaws being pitched around the internet are just another manifestation of this consumption problem. What needs to change is the impulse to buy stuff for the sake of buying stuff. "Green" consumerism is still consumerism.
A better way to think about your role in the face of these looming problems is to commit to using scarce resources wisely and efficiently. That goes for all scarce resources: energy, land, water, time and your money. Make a commitment to yourself and at the same time a co-commitment to the people with whom you share the earth.
So instead of a group of simple minded lists of the way to have a "inexperienced" Christmas, why not just prevent shopping for crap? Stop substituting matters in your time for and emotional availability to the people you love. Gift giving is a super custom, considered one of my favorites in fact. But how clever is it to move broke every December?
"Green" ideas for this or any time of year begin with the exceptional intentions, however all too quick end up the social equivalent of methadone. Buying crap continues to be buying crap, irrespective of its recycled content material. So do not purchase crap. See? No hair blouse.