"Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before! "Maybe Christmas," he thought, "doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more!"
—How The Grinch Stole Christmas, by Dr. Seuss
For a brief, shining moment this summer, people in this country started conserving as never before. Riding buses instead of driving. Consuming less as prices for food and goods spiked. (There's something about $4-a-gallon gasoline that will do that to you.)
Then along comes the holiday season. The celebration of Hannukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa and various other wintertime rites has become a bacchanalia of overconsumption and waste. We'll send 2 billion greeting cards. Wind 38,000 miles of ribbon around presents and then toss it out in the garbage can. Cut down 33 million live trees and leave them wasted on the curb 30 days later. Buy 40 percent of the annual battery sales this month alone, only to put their dangerous chemicals into landfills or the air once they have died.
Drinking. Driving around from party to party to party. Consuming more food in a month than some people in developing countries see in a year. Killing Wal-Mart clerks in mad rushes to save a few bucks on goods and toys we really don't need.
How did we ever get so lost, so far away from the real meaning of the season?
You don't have to push consumption to ridiculous levels to have a satisfying holiday season. Avarice and materialism aren't exactly the positive traits around which the season was originally built.
Here are some tips to keep a greener, more respectful holiday this year, and some ideas for you (and local governments) for future Christmas seasons:
Go green with the Word of God. After all, the Creator is an environmentalist. In Genesis, the Bible says, "God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good" (1:31). A new environmentally friendly version, The Green Bible, takes conserving the Word a step further, exploring how the Bible addresses the environment (with pertinent passages highlighted in green). It is printed on 100 percent recycled materials. Available from HarperOne ($29.95)
Re-gift. Emily Post be damned. There is nothing wrong with re-gifting, or recycling, your gifts. Eartheasy.com writes, "Re-gifting makes perfect sense. If you receive something you really don't need, look for ways you can reuse this gift by passing it on to someone who can use it. Of course, re-gifting needs to be done with care so as not to offend the original giver, but keeping a gift you don't need is wasteful."
Shop for gifts more carefully. The City of Tampa's solid waste division passes along these gift-related tips:
• Buy holiday cards printed on recycled paper.
• Save wrapping paper and ribbons for reuse.
• Use a reusable shopping bag when shopping for your holiday purchases.
• Avoid over-packaged items.
• Choose gifts with extended life expectancy.
• Use old newspaper as packaging material.
• Wrap gifts in recycled wrapping paper or newspaper comics.
• Place all small gifts directly in stockings, instead of wrapping.
• Donate good used toys and games to your favorite charity.
Give the gift of time. Giving someone your company is a whole lot better than any shiny toy that breaks by Christmas afternoon or a gift card for overpriced and fattening coffee, and you can't beat the price. Make beautiful coupons for your time and give them to friends and loved ones for different activities you pledge to do with them, including (according to New American Dream's holiday brochure) taking a walk, strolling through a park, pet sitting, a canoe ride, a night out at a favorite restaurant, a massage or candlelight dinner for your partner, babysitting for friends with newborns, hiking, camping, biking or a trip to the beach. (Our favorite coupon: Give your main squeeze a coupon book for "hot sex." Just make sure she/he redeems the coupons with you.)
Give to the needy. Charitable giving is always a good idea. There are plenty of options right here in this community (Metropolitan Ministries, Alpha House and Tampa Bay Harvest come to mind). If you want to think globally, check out Alternative Gifts International (alternativegifts.org), which allows you to browse charitable needs in developing nations and make donations in the name of a friend or family member. For instance, check out #16: Caritas Jerusalem, a project of Catholic Charities USA that provides health care for the 70 percent of Palestinians living in poverty.
Rethink your Christmas tree. The cutting and selling of live trees is a $1.3 billion business, according to the National Christmas Tree Association. For many people, the sight and smell of pine in the house is a large part of what the holidays are about. But some sustainability experts say Christmas trees are wasteful, ending up at the curbside and in landfills in many cities. And even though pesticide use on traditional Christmas trees has dropped by half over the past decade according to one university study, there is still debate over how much of the harmful chemicals end up still on the tree (and in your home). If you have to have a traditional tree, you can go organic. Finding a choose-and-cut tree farm locally increases your chances of getting a pesticide-free tree; Hydro Harvest Farm (www.hydroharvestfarms.com) in Ruskin (in southern Hillsborough County) advertises that it uses natural pest control for its live potted Carolina Sapphire pines. The farm also plants strawberries (billed as "A Very Berry Christmas") which should be ready for harvesting toward the end of the month, making a fun, red Christmas activity that is sustainable and healthy. You can find other choose-and-cut farms in West Central Florida at pickyourownchristmastree.org/FLxmaswest.
Artificial trees? Experts disagree. Some say that, since they last many years and are recyclable, they are a good alternative. Others point out that they are made of petroleum-based plastics and therefore not environmentally smart. Your call here, although the new artificials look a whole lot better than the green pipe-cleaner variety we grew up with.
If you do buy a cut tree, make sure it gets recycled into mulch. Most of the large cities in the Bay area offer curbside tree pickup for recycling after the holidays are over. Once you recycle that tree, go out and buy a live tree and plant it on your property.
Plant live trees. It would be great to see Tampa Bay civic groups and local governments team up for a holiday tree-planting program like the one in San Francisco. An environmental group has paired with city government to sell potted trees in several (non-pine) varieties at Christmas for $90. Once the holiday is over, the trees will be picked up and planted along city streets. You can check out how it works at sfenvironment.org.
Decorate wisely. Avoid using one-time holiday decorations, like the fake spray snow or window stickers. Use LED holiday lights indoors and outdoors to save energy; an LED saves up to 90 percent of the energy of a conventional Christmas light and doesn't get as warm, making it less likely you will have a visit from your neighborhood firefighters. Stay away from plastic fake garland; Natural Home magazine instead has a great idea on how to string your own garland from lemon leaves, nuts and stone fruits. (Online at www.ecologue.com/ShowArticle/make-your-own-holiday-garland.)
Go battery-free. Every year, Christmas is a battery-fest, with scads of disposable chemical time bombs purchased in sizes AAA, AA, C and D. Forty percent of all battery sales happen during the holidays, according to the EPA. Disposable batteries are chock full of nasty chemicals that find their way into our environment, either buried in the ground in landfills where they can leach into water supplies, or burned up in waste-to-energy plants and spread through the air over the entire region. (These chemicals include mercury, lead, cadmium, chromium and silver, among others; more than 80 percent of mercury in the waste stream, for instance, comes from disposable batteries.) Rechargeable batteries are better, but even they eventually wear out and end up in the waste stream. Consider toys that don't require batteries.
Get simple. New American Dream (newdream.org) has a 20-page holiday brochure available for a free download (with site registration) that helps you simplify the season. You can find it at www.newdream.org/holiday/brochure.php. It recommends talking with your family to set realistic and joyful expectations for what the holiday season should mean and gives anecdotal ideas such as this one from a Tracy Stevens: "This year we plan on doing something different than the expensive Christmas Tree, and something that puts us more in line with the joy and simplicity of the season. I cut up sheets of green, red and white paper lengthwise into four or five pieces. Any time we did something kind or experienced something good, we wrote it on the paper and put it in a pile in a cabinet. When it comes time for the Christmas tree we will take all of those strips of paper and make a paper chain with them, reading them all as we make them. We will hang them in some way that resembles the shape of a Christmas tree. My kids have really enjoyed posting special moments and they have been looking forward to creating our 'good tree.'"
Cook smart. Yes, we know the winter holidays are synonymous with huge meals normally centered on mass-produced turkeys. Thanks to advances in poultry farming, turkeys don't have growth hormones or steroids, but if you want to go organic, you can find better birds online or at local natural food markets. You can find some local farmers who raise the birds in an eco-friendly manner, but it is likely too late to get one this year: The Sarasota Herald-Tribune reports that one heritage turkey farmer, Ben Pate in Ruskin, sold out his stock before Thanksgiving.
Other cooking tips, courtesy of Tampa's Solid Waste Department: Reuse aluminum cooking trays instead of using disposable ones; buy only as much food as needed, as food wastes account for more of our household waste than aluminum cans, plastic bottles and glass combined; and freeze leftovers for meals.
Do something nice for birds instead. Participate in an annual bird count or start your own holiday tradition of bird-counting. Better yet, instead of eating birds, feed them. Pick up pine cones, smear them with peanut butter, roll them in bird seed, and hang them in an open area where birds will see any cats coming. Make it somewhere you and the kids can watch the different variety of birds coming for their holiday feast.
Digitize your Christmas card. The old-fashioned Christmas card is starting to be an anachronism in our digital age, and yet we send billions of them in December. Go paper-free this year, either e-mailing a Christmas letter or a link to a Christmas blog or website you can set up for free. Twitter your holiday wishes or post them on Facebook. Upload photos of your family during the holidays onto Photobucket, Snapfish, Flickr or Picasa and send the link to your mailing list. Better yet, how about telephoning those friends and family members you never talk to and only contact once a year with a Christmas card and let them hear your voice instead of reading your signature? And if you must spend money with companies such as Hallmark, use their online digital cards instead of paper.
Dine (and clean up) sustainably. Avoid paper plates, plastic cutlery and Styrofoam cups in favor of the metal flatware, real glasses and dishes that can be washed and reused. If you must use paper products, make sure they are made from recycled paper. Use cloth napkins and table linens instead of disposable. Encourage your dinner guests to bring their contributions in real dishes and bowls instead of disposable containers. Then at clean-up time, use old T-shirts for wiping up and dusting instead of paper towels or other disposable commercial cleaning cloths.
This article appears in Dec 10-16, 2008.