Obviously, the uber-rich and/or powerful folks in the WEF won’t be buying these. The ideas are simply for the peasants
6 sustainable gift ideas for the holiday period
During the holiday season that clusters around Christmas, people in nations across the globe give one another gifts and, whether countries have a Christian tradition or not, it’s become ever more commercial.
But as concern about the state of the planet grows, should we rethink the presents we give?
No.
So how can you get value for money and value for the planet when you go shopping for holiday season gifts?
Here are some more sustainable gift ideas to mark the festive season from the World Economic Forum’s innovation crowdsourcing hub UpLink.
- Vegan leather and clothes from 100% plant material
- Sustainable, responsibly sourced products from the Amazon (yeah, it doesn’t use fossil fuels to travel around the world, right?)
- Sustainable seaweed products (gross)
- Planting trees in Africa (the Cult has been pushing this for decades. How’s that working?)
- Helping restore the world’s coral reefs (in other words, give money while doing nothing)
- Push back the desert in the Sahel, Africa (things change)
Meanwhile, the WEF folks will be buying expensive luxury vehicles for their family members and taking long fossil fueled private jet flights to exotic vacations spots. Meanwhile
Christmas Cards – consumerist waste or meaningful tradition? – Ellen Jones, BHASVIC
Year upon year, I, among many others, enjoy a festive hour of carols whilst writing my annual pile of well-wishes. Not only does it serve as the perfect opportunity to evaluate your relationships – does that cousin you don’t remember meeting really make the cut? – but as a thoughtful, affordable way to tell someone you’re thinking of them at Christmastime. However, when the impending doom of climate change is upon us, how much help will these cheerful messages be?
Every single Christmas card you send is estimated to emit 140kg of carbon dioxide during production. Furthermore, 1 billion of these cards are likely to end in landfill after a few jolly weeks on the mantlepiece. The few wasted after I spelt names wrong are certainly coming back to haunt me now. Stepping away from the message of Christmas, it seems that producing masses of greenhouse gases and 1 billion wasted cards is nothing more than a nicely-wrapped example of consumerist habits fuelling the climate crisis.
Yet, for many, Christmas cards are more than that. It’s a way to keep in touch with old friends, share an annual photo of your children, and show your family you care. Receiving cards reminds people to call on a loved one, or perhaps just frantically try to recall if that was the person they knocked off the list or not! Whatever you feel about it, sending Christmas cards is a tradition many hold close to their hearts, and an opportunity to send a message a gift can’t quite convey.
But, taking into account, the permanent damage these festive fiends are causing for our planet, will you be sending Christmas cards this year? Perhaps the rising cost of living has already made the choice for you, or the upcoming postal strikes, as it has for many. And I’m sure some are glad of the excuse!
The Grinches are working hard this year.
“Planting trees in Africa”? Why would that be any different from planting trees in the United States?
If I’m going to spend money, I’d rather spend it in the United States, on American products and helping American workers.
The great thing about doing any sort of charity in Africa is that the donors have a near zero chance of ever going there to audit results. So… Free money. If you plant a tree in your hometown, you will go there to see if it got planted and is growing and tell your grandkids, “I planted that tree”.
I’ve planted many trees in my lifetime, but always on my own property. My house in Pennsylvania? It had exactly zero trees on it when we bought it, and had seven when we left. We actually had another I planted, but it failed. Some of them were small trees: two dwarf Alberta spruces, a weeping cherry tree, a dogwood, and a Japanese Maple, but there’s a Red Sunset Maple, six feet when we planted it, 18 feet last time I saw it, and an arborvitae that’s about 12 feet tall. We had to consider the size of the long but narrow yard.
Here? A Japanese Maple, a fig, a pin oak, an ornamental pear, some sort of maple tree that we transplanted from a weed, two peach trees and three apple trees. Alas! the field in which I planted the last five mentioned really isn’t good for trees, with the water table being slightly too high, and while they’re mostly still alive, it’s just barely. The water table is high on all of my property, but that particular field is about a foot lower, and it just hasn’t worked well.