Conscious Choice: A Green Holiday for All

December 1999 | News of the Earth

A Green Holiday for All

by Dave Aftandilian

In the midst of your holiday hustle and bustle, have you ever wished that you could just sit down in a quiet place for a moment and take a break from it all? If you have, you’re not alone. A recent poll conducted for the Center for a New American Dream found that a third of the average person’s time over the holidays is spent doing stressful or uncomfortable things. A lot of that discomfort comes from spending too much; 70 percent of those polled said that they were tired of excessive holiday spending and gift giving.

Our annual orgy of consumption also takes an extra toll on the environment. Lots of small car trips to pick up odds and ends — that bunch of celery you forgot to buy for the stuffing, or that one last gift — add up to a lot of wasted gasoline and extra air pollution, for instance. Partners for Environmental Progress estimates that if each of us cut back on our holiday gas consumption by just one gallon, we could reduce tailpipe emissions of greenhouse gases by one million tons.

But the biggest environmental consequence of the holidays is the huge amount of garbage generated at this festive time of year. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, Americans throw out about a million extra tons of garbage a week. That’s 25 percent more than our already excessive normal amount of trash. What a waste!

Give Less, Get More

How do we get off the holiday overconsumption treadmill? The first step is talking with our families and friends about establishing some new holiday traditions, traditions that don’t involve keeping megacorporations in business by buying expensive gifts that nobody really needs. It’s good to start small, perhaps by making a deal with one’s significant other that you’ll exchange lots of love for each other over the holidays, but only one gift. Another option is to put a cap on the dollar amount that can be spent for each gift, or over the holidays as a whole.

Next, think about your most treasured holiday memories. Compare how many revolve around receiving the perfect gift versus spending quality time with family and friends. I’ll bet family and friends win every time. Try to keep that in mind as you prepare for the holidays, and set aside time, rather than money, to spend with the people you care about.

But exchanging gifts can be fun too, and there’s no reason to give it up entirely if you don’t want to. Here are some suggestions for earth-friendly gifts that cost and waste little (you can find a lot more ideas on the Center for a New American Dream’s web site; see below for address):

Create "gift certificates" for a home-cooked meal (delivered!), a massage, a trip to a forest preserve, an evening of babysitting, or a week of dishwashing. Teach someone a skill you have, or buy them lessons from a local musician or craftsperson. Make a charitable donation in someone’s name, or buy them a membership in an environmental or socially conscious organization. Frame a favorite photo, compile a scrapbook, or tape record yourself recounting a favorite childhood memory for a relative.

If you prefer to purchase a ready-made gift, try to buy goods manufactured and sold locally. You’ll save money on gas, help support your local economy, and have the satisfaction of knowing you’re giving a gift that wasn’t made with sweatshop or child labor. Try to buy items that are recycled and recyclable, aren’t swathed in a host of wasteful packaging, and that are something the recipient needs and will be able to use for a long time. Giving recyclable batteries with gifts that require them helps start a good habit that keeps the toxic chemicals in regular, alkaline batteries out of our landfills and our drinking water. If you’re stumped on what to buy, try a gift certificate. You can bet that won’t be returned the day after Christmas.

Once you’ve purchased your gift, you’ll want to wrap it — or will you? Maybe you could put it in a reusable bag or box instead, and save the pile of wrapping paper. Or you could reuse some of the old magazines in the garage, or the Sunday comics, as colorful, recyclable wrappers.

And what about all those holiday greeting cards? Partners for Environmental Progress notes that the 2.65 billion Christmas cards sold each year in the U.S. could fill a football field ten stories high; if we each sent one card less, we’d save 50,000 cubic yards of paper. For your Internet-savvy friends and relations, you could send a web card instead (see below for some web sites that offer these cards for free). Many of these are extremely colorful, and some even have animated scenes set to holiday music. If you’re the creative type, or have kids that are, making your own cards at home from scrap paper — or the recycled fronts of last year’s cards — can be a lot of fun too.

Finally, the Christmas tree. Instead of buying one, you might want to decorate a tree in your yard. If you’d rather have an indoor tree, try to buy one that you can plant after the holidays, or make sure it will go to a recycling center so that it can be mulched.

Here’s hoping you and yours have a holiday filled with more joy and less stuff.

Green Holiday Resources

Center for a New American Dream
tel: 877-NU-DREAM (toll free)
e-mail: newdream@newdream.org

North Carolina Pollution Prevention and Environmental Assistance Service

Partners for Environmental Progress
e-mail: info@cygnus-group.com

Holiday Greeting Card Sites

www.123greetings.com/

www.bluemountain.com/index.html

www.buildacard.com/

www.forworld.com/greetingcard/allholiday.html

www.greeting-cards.com/

www.marlo.com/holiday.htm

members.xoom.com/aburnett/virtual.html

www.prismweb.com/vgc/

www.zlinks.com/

A Gift to the World’s Poor

In Leviticus 25 it is written, "you shall hallow the fiftieth year. You shall proclaim release throughout the land for all its inhabitants. It shall be a jubilee for you." Based on this biblical passage, a worldwide movement named Jubilee 2000 has called for canceling the unpayable debts of the world’s poorest countries by the year 2000. Together the fifty-two poorest nations owe $350 billion, a debt burden that is equivalent to 93 percent of their total incomes, according to the Jubilee 2000 Coalition in the U.K. Jubilee 2000/USA gives a specific example: "a child in Nicaragua is born owing over $2,000, while average yearly income there is $390." Such a crushing debt can never be repaid. Yet in many of these countries, scarce resources are diverted from health care, education, and other socially beneficial programs to make debt payments.

The debt burden of the poorest nations takes a heavy toll on their environments as well as their peoples. According to Jubilee 2000/USA, "Debt harms the environment, encouraging rainforest destruction and pollution as poor countries use cheap but environmentally destructive ways to earn export revenues. To attract foreign investment to help pay the debt, countries often weaken the enforcement of international and national environmental standards and regulations."

Small farmers are forced from their lands to make way for monocultural plantations of cash crops for the export market. To increase yields on overtaxed soils, fertilizers and pesticides are regularly overapplied. Fish stocks are damaged through overharvest, and forests are sold to the highest bidder for timber or more land to be cleared for plantation crops or raising cattle. Huge mining projects rape the land for minerals, and leave toxic chemicals behind that leach into drinking water supplies. And subsistence farmers and indigenous groups are forced to make do with less, cutting down timber for fuel and farming soils they know will be exhausted in very little time, all because they have no choice.

Environmental protections have little meaning in countries where people cannot feed their children. As Jubilee 2000/UK notes, "It is the world’s largest debtors that are chopping down their forests the fastest. Brazil is the world’s largest deforester and one of its largest debtors, owing $112 billion. It is cutting a staggering 50,000 square kilometers of forest every year."

At a time when most industrialized nations enjoy unparalleled economic wealth — a recent United Nations report, for instance, shows that the income of the three richest families in the world (Bill Gates, the Sultan of Brunei, and the Walton family of Wal-Mart fame) now exceeds the combined GNPs of the forty-three least developed countries — it seems that we ought to be able to find it in our hearts to forgive the debts of those who cannot afford to buy enough to eat.

Nor will this bankrupt our economies. The U.S., for instance, is owed about $6 billion by the poorest nations, but according to economist Jeffrey D. Sachs of Harvard University, "these loans are carried on the books at about 10 percent of their face value, or around $600 million," because creditors know it’s extremely unlikely the loans will ever be repaid. Sachs’ analysis suggests that canceling these debts would cost each American about one cent a day for several years.

In an important step forward for Jubilee 2000, President Clinton announced at the end of September that he would work to cancel the debts owed to the U.S. by the thirty-six poorest nations if those countries proved that they would channel the money into areas such as education and health care. Congressional approval is far from guaranteed, of course, but the strong support of conservative Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-AL), as well as religious leaders such as Pope John Paul II and Rev. Jesse Jackson, should help.

You can play a part in making the holidays a whole lot brighter for people in these countries too. Check out the web sites listed below for more information on what you can do; a good first step would be to sign the petition on the Jubilee 2000/UK site, then contact your Congressional representatives to ask them to vote to forgive the debt.

Jubilee 2000 Coalition UK
e-mail: mail@jubilee2000uk.org

Jubilee 2000/USA
tel: 202-783-3566
e-mail: coord@j2000usa.org

A Presidential Gift to the Nation’s Forests

In October, President Clinton directed the U.S. Forest Service to develop regulations that would protect the more than 40 million acres of pristine roadless areas in our National Forests from commercial logging, mining, and oil and gas drilling. Describing such areas as "a treasured inheritance," Clinton said that "it is in the best interest of our Nation, and of future generations, to provide strong and lasting protection for these forests." In addition to developing rules to protect roadless areas that have already been officially inventoried, most of which are larger than 5,000 acres, Clinton also instructed the Forest Service "to determine whether such protection is warranted for any smaller‘roadless’ areas not yet inventoried."

According to the Forest Service, the 1997 timber harvest from the National Forests represented only 3.5 percent of the total timber cut in the U.S.; according to a 1999 environmental assessment by the Forest Service, only 5 percent of that already small amount of timber cut from public lands would be affected by protecting roadless areas. Unfortunately, much of this timber is very valuable (old growth wood tends to have a tighter grain than younger trees), and so Republicans from the Western states that would be most affected by the roadless areas protections have severely criticized the President’s action. For instance, Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) accused Clinton of pursuing "an agenda against public use." Naturally the forest products industry isn’t too pleased by the proposed regulations either. W. Henson Moore, president of the American Forest and Paper Association, called Clinton’s proposal "very extremist."

However, the President enjoys strong public support for protecting roadless areas in our National Forests. A recent poll conducted for the Wilderness Society found that 70 percent of Americans favor a ban on logging, mining, and drilling in these areas. Apparently the American public understands the value of a standing forest versus a pile of lumber or mine tailings a little better than Senator Craig or Mr. Moore. Americans appreciate the value of a forest as wildlife habitat, for instance, including homes for many rare and endangered species; as shelter protecting headwaters that hundreds of communities depend upon for clean drinking water; and as recreational land for all of us.

Happily, unlike the $1 billion "land legacy" initiative to protect open spaces that Clinton proposed and the Republicans in Congress have refused to fund, the roadless areas regulations would not require Congressional approval, only a period of environmental review and public comment after the Forest Service develops the necessary regulations.

We’ll let you know when the roadless areas protection rules become available for public comment (according to the Forest Service, sometime between spring and fall of next year). But in the meantime, you might want to take a moment to thank President Clinton for taking this bold action to protect our public wild lands from exploitation by private industry. You can call the President at 202-456-1414, or send e-mail to president@whitehouse.gov.

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