Sustainable gifts: Difference between revisions

You can have a Green Christmas.

Often the best time of year for catching up with family and friends, it's also the biggest time of spending - on presents, food, alcohol, parties and holidays. Unfortunately, all of our spending and consumption results in significant environmental damage and carbon pollution.

However, you don't have to be a scrooge to reduce your carbon footprint at Christmas.

Here are tips for a more sustainable festive season.

Buy a service, not a product

To reduce embodied carbon pollution and water consumption, think about buying someone a service - say a voucher for a massage, rather than a massaging appliance. Vouchers for other services, (such as gardening or housecleaning) or film and theatre tickets are also good. Beware gifts that will increase the recipient's motor travel.

Buy gift vouchers

Gift vouchers are a good thing for the environment. People use them to get exactly what they want. And they can use its value for a purchase in the store at any time after christmas. Make sure the validity is at least 6 months or a year, so that recipient will not forget to use it before it expires.

Some shopping malls and city centres are starting to share the same type of vouchers between all shops in that area, so you will not restrict the monetary value having to be spent in a certain shop. More choices for the recipient to select what they would want to buy and in a shop of their choice.

If your friends get accustomed to this, they will learn that you probably also would appreciate gift vouchers as a christmas gift. So you will all benefit from being less stressed in the busy shops in december.

Buy gifts that give twice

Give your friends and family membership to charities, overseas aid groups or environment organisations

Buy carbon offsets

You can choose the amount you want to spend and offset someone's car travel, household energy use or airline travel, once-off or for a year. A great gift for people coming from interstate to celebrate the festive season. Make sure you check the bonafides of the offsets though - some are dubious.

Buy energy saving gifts

For energy saving gifts to really save energy, generally they must be tailored to the recipient's circumstances. Many of these items require behavior adjustments to be fully effective, so be conscious of what the recipient is willing to do to get the full energy savings from such a product. Ordinarily one might expect anyone who is motivated to save energy would have already purchased these things, so a passive recipient may not have the interest to use these products to best advantage.

• If your recipient owns an electric stove that has charred black drip pans under the burners, a set of shiny new chrome-plated drip pans will produce an immediate savings in electricity for cooking. But the recipient must keep the drip pans clean. If spills accumulate, they will quickly char and reduce the heat-reflective properties of the pans.
• Weatherstripping kits. If a house has leaky doors or windows, weatherstripping will usually produce the greatest ratio of energy saved to money invested of any thermal efficiency upgrade to the house. This gift is only effective if the recipient needs weatherstripping, and will install the weatherstrip kits, or if you go to the recipient's house and install them.
• You could give a promise to help a house-owner upgrade his wall insulation, replace some windows with 3-glass high efficiency versions, or anything else of manual labour, if they are planning to do some renovation to upgrade their home.
• Warm houseclothes, house slippers, half-finger gloves, bed covers. Turning down the thermostat in cold weather saves far more in energy and money than it costs for the extra clothing one needs in a colder house. However, the recipient must actually reduce the house heat for this gift to save any energy.
• High efficiency light bulbs. If your recipient is still using conventional incandescent bulbs, they will appreciate to get modern high efficient CFLs or LEDs. They will provide an immediate electricity savings for them with no reduction in service, and no behavior change from the recipient (other than not having to replace bulbs as often), provided the new bulbs have sufficient light output to match the old bulbs (that is generally the case with the cheapest options)
• Extension cords or power strip with surge protectors, on/off-switch or timer. Will provide clever functionality for recipient, ability to connect several electric appliances to it and be able to switch it off (manually or automatically), instead of leaving it on standby. Timers (for wall sockets) are also a good gift for example for lights that are placed in windows, that the home owner sometimes forget to turn off at night.

Get a really green Christmas tree

Go for a native tree in a pot which you can use year after year, or can plant in the garden after Christmas. In Australia, you can support the campaign to revive the native Wollemi Pine, an endangered Australian native which makes a great Christmas tree.

Another option is to buy a fake tree as long as you're going to buy one that lasts for a long time and you reuse it for years.

Compost your neighbors' trees

If you live in a community that sends Christmas trees to landfill after Christmas, rescue your neighbors' trees when they set them out for collection. Drag them home and cut off all the branches. Add the branches to your compost pile, or arrange them around your shrubs to make a green mulch. Saw the bottom 30-40 cm of each de-limbed trunk into a long, tapering point, and use them for garden stakes (for staking up tomatoes, peppers, etc.). When they start to rot after a season or two, cut them up and add them to next year's compost pile. Alternatively, if you have access to a woodchipper,^W you can chop the trees into chips and use them for garden mulch or covering footpaths, or process the mulch through a pellet mill^W to make fuel pellets.^W Landfilling Christmas trees is one of the worst disposal methods for them, because it wastes diesel fuel to haul them to the landfill, and then as they decay anaerobically they release landfill gas^W which may escape to the atmosphere, where the methane component acts as a potent greenhouse gas.^W Only if the landfill has an efficient landfill gas collection^W system should landfiling be an acceptable disposal method for any material which could be mulched or composted.

Keep a list of things you want/need

Some people love giving presents and they will only feel happy if they give you something. So keep a list of things, of various costs, that you do want or need. For example a book, or a tool, a scarf, a cooking implement, some kind of special food for Xmas... Note your ideas down somewhere where you will remember them - for example on the calender or in your phone.

If you are like me, then if you don't keep a list, your mind will go blank and you won't be able to think of anything when your relative or friend asks 'what do you want for Christmas'?. It might feel a little greedy, but it is better to be able to say 'actually, I would really like this...' than to get something you don't particularly need or want.

Recycle or make your own Xmas paper

Most wrapping paper is not made from recycled paper. When you get wrapped presents unwrap them carefully and you can use the paper again.

Local giving

Be aware of "gift miles" (analogous to food miles^W). Exchanging material gifts with distant people is usually less green than exchanging gifts with people within walking distance. If you must buy a gift for someone distant, prefer a gift voucher they can redeem locally.

Giving the un-gift

Some people quietly (or not so quietly) resent the commercialized gift exchange tradition that has accumulated around Christmas. Not to mention the dishonesty of pretending to like an unwanted gift. One of the nicest "gifts" you can give to such people is to release them from any implied obligation to give you a gift. Tell them, "My gift to you is that I liberate you from having to buy me a gift." You may find that some people who feign outward enthusiasm for their annual servility ritual to corporate profit-taking will eagerly accept your un-gift.

Giving to the poor

For a gift to be truly a gift, and not merely a self-interested barter^W exchange, the recipient must be unable to give anything equally valuable in return. There are always reputable charities needing help. Instead of giving reciprocal gifts to relatively wealthy people who are already consuming more than their fair share, consider giving the gift of recognition to wealthy people for their acts of charity. Offer to match their charitable gifts, in whatever proportion you can.

Giving to the community

Do something nice for the common good. Pick up some litter. Shovel snow off a neglected sidewalk. Rake up a neighbor's leaves, and compost them. If someone acknowledges your acts of kindness, suggest they pay them forward by doing something kind for someone else, such as giving to a charity, shoveling some more neglected sidewalks, buying Renewable Energy Certificates,^W etc.

Things to avoid

• Non recyclable gift wrapping paper.
• Presents that won't get used or will be thrown out after a short period
• Toys or other items that will require the recipient to buy batteries or extra equipment before they can start to use it.
• Eating too much at Christmas lunch.
• Answering work phone calls (mobile or otherwise).

Enjoy a safe and happy festive season.

See also

• Gifts that keep on giving

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