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.

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.
• 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 incandescent bulbs, high efficient CFLs or LEDs provide an immediate savings 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.

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.

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.

Template:Attrib Greenlivingpedia