Category Archives: Environmentally Friendly

Is Greening Your Christmas a Bad Thing?

Christmas

Saw an interesting article over on TreeHugger, discussing a very disappointing article in the New York Times. It’s pretty much just discouraging people from thinking green at Christmas, as though it’s a rather selfish, potentially unAmerican thing to do.

Perhaps the most annoying quote of the entire article:

Still, to some ears, the call for less excessive consumption during the holidays sounds almost un-American.

“The point of the holidays for many people is the joy people get in giving,” said Kenneth P. Green, a resident scholar on environmental issues at the American Enterprise Institute. Environmentalists who scold their families are simply making “ritualistic gestures that won’t solve the problem,” he said.

Silly me, I thought there was something more. At least, that’s what I learned in church, as well as being the major point of How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Perhaps I need to reread it. Maybe the presents were the point after all.

I do think there are a lot of ways to green a Christmas, and I’ll be going over a lot of green gift ideas in the days to come. Some will be greener than others, but I do think we can have fun, give good gifts and still think of the environment.

This is certainly more challenging in some families than in others. My inlaws, for example, are decidedly not environmentalists. Wonderful people in so many ways, but my father-in-law in particular is fond of the term “eco-Nazi”. Anything too blatantly “green” isn’t going to please him. We don’t talk politics much.

I’ve been improving my own habits and those of my husband, although we’re certainly not as green as we could be yet. Just this morning I stopped my husband from buying a ton of THINGS from a clearance website. Yes, all very cool gadgets and toys, lots of fun, and if I weren’t so interested in saving money and the environment I probably could have gotten into more mischief there than he wants to. But I’ve learned to control those impulses somewhat better, and nixed several items on him.

Overall, I’d far rather give my family the lesson that things do not make for a great Christmas. The people you care about do. It’s more relaxing, generates less trash, costs less money and can be a whole lot more fun.

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Are Any Gadgets Green?

I love looking at gadgets. The sheer range of stuff fascinates me, although I very rarely buy any of it. Only reason I even have a cell phone, for example, is because my inlaws insisted on buying one and paying for the plan. They didn’t want me to have a car breakdown with the kids inside, and no way to call a tow truck.

But when you think about it, most electronics are far from green and are mostly luxuries. They’re awfully nice to have, but not so vital as some feel.

But a few do have at the very least interesting purposes. The Kill-A-Watt, for example. If you’ve ever wondered about how much electricity your gadgets are using, it allows you to find out. It can be great motivation for unplugging battery chargers and other electronics when they aren’t in use. Many continue to use at least a little power so long as they’re plugged in.

While not what most people think of as a gadget, surge suppressors and power strips can have a green function too. Shutting them off allows you to completely power down the electronics connected to them. Once you’ve used the Kill-A-Watt to recognize the things you need to unplug more often, these can simplify matters by allowing you to just turn off one item.

If you use batteries at all, a good battery charger is a great gadget to have. Solar is better yet, although looking at reviews on Amazon a lot of them don’t look as promising as one might hope. A good battery charger is high on my Christmas wish list because while my own usage of batteries is fairly minimal, I do have kids and haven’t completely escaped the electronic toy phenomenon.

Solar ovens are also pretty interesting gadgets. I even found instructions on how to make one from a windshield shade, but you can buy some pretty nice ones if you don’t feel up to making one. Solarcooking.org has instructions for a variety of homemade solar ovens. It’s another gadget I have my eye on.

The greenest gadgets often aren’t as high tech as what most people think of when you say gadget, but to me many are every bit as interesting.

One could push the point and say that even an MP3 player is in a sense green, or at least possibly greener than buying CD after CD. The hard part to figure out with them, of course, is durability and the chronic temptation to upgrade. But they’re becoming compatible with many car and home stereo systems, and so potentially replace not only CDs, but CD players themselves. Don’t overdo it on the accessories, and recharge the batteries, and it’s not too bad.

Few choices are perfect when you think about the green angles, but some are definitely better than others. Tempting though they may be, try not to overdo it when it comes to buying gadgets and other things just because they’re fun.

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How Do You Find Green Toys and Safer Toys?

The number of toy recalls this year has been nothing short of astounding. Everything from lead paint to GHB. It really is sad that so much can get into the stores that isn’t safe for our children.

safe toys

All of this is going to make Christmas gift shopping a lot harder for parents. While I had no intention of buying them, my daughter had expressed a strong interest in those Aqua Dots that have now been recalled.

While I don’t always succeed in keeping my toy shopping green for my kids, I have managed it some of the time, and a lot of the toys are pretty neat. Even Amazon has a fair selection of bamboo toys. My daughter has the bamboo dominos, for example, and really enjoys them. Amazon also carries a selection of handmade toys.

Of course you can shop with smaller companies too. There are a lot of companies online, such as WoodGamz.com, which makes cornhole games, Kazoo Toys which sells many toys that are made in the USA, and other such companies.

The challenge can be in denying your kids the hot toys that all their friends want. The point I like to remember is that my daughter won’t be upset with me for long. She has fun with the toys I choose for her, and generally doesn’t even think of the toys she had wanted unless she sees them again elsewhere (at which point the answer is simply ‘no’).

Admittedly, this is easier since she’s just 5.

What I like best to get for kids are toys that strongly encourage creativity or activity. Kids are generally pretty content with such toys.

Craftbury Kids, for example, offers a lot of old fashioned and wooden toys that look just wonderful to me. I haven’t checked all of the toys, but I think most of their toys are made in the USA or Europe, which is a nice start for not needing to worry about lead in the paint. They even have a log cabin toy set that is very similar to Lincoln Logs.

The Discovery Channel also offers a selection of green toys that your children may enjoy. I do miss seeing their stores in the mall, but at least they’re still online. Not everything that they sell is green of course, and some things such as the Discovery Hydrogen Fuel Rocket are only semi-green, being made of plastic but teaching about alternative energy sources.

While for younger children you shouldn’t forget how wonderful a plain set of wooden blocks can be, older kids can be more challenging, especially as they see what their friends get. The pressure starts more or less as soon as they have friends that they talk toys with… say, preschool age, and keeps building.

The best general advice I can give in that area is to do the best you can and talk to your kids about why you don’t want to buy certain toys. My daughter, for example, badly wanted Aqua Dots, which initially received a general ‘no’ but since the recall have had an explanation in depth that she understood. She was just about frantic for a friend of hers who she knew had received them for a birthday.

She’s less understanding about why she can’t have a Bratz doll, but a part of that is rather abstract and hard to explain to a 5 year old.

As you shop, think about the reputation of the product you’re buying as well as the store. Even good companies sometimes make mistakes. But a good store will quickly clear out anything that has been recalled, while cheaper stores may be slow to do so. Look for toys that encourage creativity and interaction, not ones that direct the child. Go green when possible, but if you’re stuck, sometimes you have to decide if it’s worth it to you anyhow. If the toy is durable, at the very least it could be reused by someone else.

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What Really Happens to Recycled Electronics?

Given my preference that old electronics be recycled, it was quite disappointing to read this article the other day on CNN about what really happens to most ‘recycled’ electronics. As they say, it’s not what you would expect. A lot of them just go to other countries, with the unusable parts still ending up in landfills.

old electronics

I don’t really have a problem with usable electronics being reused. That’s a good thing. But mixing reusable with unusable and shipping the problem out is not acceptable.

Eight states so far have the right idea, in requiring manufacturers to recycle their old electronics. That needs to just be common practice. I’ve said before that I would love to see electronics stores be required to take the old electronics back. Nice, easy locations for people to get to. Perhaps a surcharge on purchases to help with the expense of doing this if necessary, and a rebate for returning products as a motivation.

It is important to note that companies like Apple, Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Sony now do take back their electronics for recycling. If they’re doing it right, this is a wonderful development.

As with any solution, it’s going to take time to get things going right. On the other hand, I do have an old, broken down Dell we hadn’t decided what to do with yet….

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Figuring Out Green Travel for Families

With the holiday season upon us, many families will be traveling a lot, even if only to visit relatives. It’s hard sometimes to balance environmental sensibilities with the chance to see rarely-seen relatives.

green holiday travel

Visiting family is one of the delights of the holiday season. In fact, I recently returned from a pre-holiday dinner with relatives that live 500 miles away from me. We drove, as that was the most sensible for our budget. Fortunately that also appears to be the method of travel that produces the least carbon.

I found a carbon trip calculator that showed that driving that distance in a small car like ours creates about 600 pounds of carbon. The round trip flight would create 431 lbs of carbon per passenger. That may sound better, but remember that’s per passenger, and there are 4 of us. I had to estimate with the car, since the site only calculates based on annual usage, going as low as 2000 miles. I cut that number in half since the round trip is approximately 1000 miles.

Trains are also a greener way to go, but rather more leisurely than many people have time for when traveling for the holidays. On the plus side, the kids aren’t so strapped in and can wander about. No bathroom stops either. But the only train service I saw for our trip involved two stints on a bus… not my idea of a good trip. But it’s fairly efficient and doesn’t produce as much carbon as other alternatives.

But kids can get just as bored and annoying to other passengers on the train as they do on a plane. Bring toys if that’s your choice.

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