Zero Waste Holidays

Christmas is only 5 days away and if you’re still shopping for gifts watch this video and then read on for a message from Transition Voice‘s Sherry Ackerman to give you some inspiration for a zero waste holiday!

Getting into the Zero Waste holiday spirit doesn’t mean turning into an obsessive recycler or going out of your way to locate special products at environmentally friendly stores. The sum of individual actions such as using cloth instead of paper napkins, refusing to buy over-packaged goods, or limiting what you spend can keep thousands of pounds of garbage from our landfills.

Being aware of what you buy is the most important thing that you can do to reduce waste and your impact on the planet this holiday season. Recycling is one way to divert the amount of garbage going to our landfill but the real key to making a dent in our holiday waste generation is moving beyond recycling to reuse and reduction.

Reducing spending and devoting less time to buying things doesn’t mean losing out on the spirit of the Holidays. If anything you will feel better for being able to spend more time with friends and loved ones and knowing you’re helping to protect the Earth.

And remember – if you do find a gift that needs to be wrapped…most Christmas wrapping paper is not recyclable because it is too waxy so choose a recyclable wrap OR use newspaper!

Let us know if you’ve come up with any fantastic ideas for homemade, crafted, reused, repurposed or reloved gifts this year!  Leave a comment or email us at nowastewednesdays@gmail.com

More of What Matters

Happy Wednesday!  After today, there are only 2 more Wednesdays left in 2011 and we are feeling pretty excited to start 2012 with lots of new ideas, more information and a couple of local events in the works.  If you have suggestions of issues you’d like to read more about or suggestions of what to highlight on this blog please drop us a note at nowastewednesdays@gmail.com or leave us a comment.

For today we wanted to steer your attention towards a very neat video with a powerful message created by the The Center for a New American Dream, which focuses on helping Americans reduce and shift their consumption to improve quality of life, protect the environment, and promote social justice.  Sounds like our kind of dream! 

In this short animation, psychologist Tim Kasser discusses how America’s culture of consumerism undermines our well-being. When people buy into the ever-present marketing messages that “the good life” is “the goods life,” they not only use up Earth’s limited resources, but they are less happy and less inclined toward helping others.

The animation both lays out the problems of excess materialism and points toward solutions that promise a healthier, more just, and more sustainable life.

Simple Giving – gifts that can make a difference

The first Wednesday of December brings us into our last theme of the year: consumer habits.

It is easy, especially during the Christmas gift-giving season, to get caught up in shopping, sales and finding the right gift for your loved ones.

The temptation to spend and motivation to buy more is all around us even if we are aware how heavy a toll our consuming culture can take on the environment.  Keeping up with consumer demand fuels the exploitation of scarce and fragile natural resources, huge amounts of toxic industrial emissions and discharges to air and water, the explosive growth of oversized retailers sprawled out across once-open or wooded land, and a waste stream bloated with excess packaging and discarded products and materials.

It is the consumer who decides what gets made and who gets to make it merely by giving or withholding their support.  A consumer movement towards more nonmaterial spending and the purchase of natural and sustainable products will push businesses to be more earth-wise.

Purchases of both necessity and extravagance, and everything in between, can have profound environmental impacts.  Products can impact the environment in their extraction, manufacture, packaging, delivery, end-use and disposal – leaving a trail of environmental pollution and degradation reaching across continents.

(Adapted & quoted from Crissy Trask “It’s Easy Being Green”)

So for this Christmas giving season – if you’re wondering about what gifts to give, think nonmaterial or consumables… One idea is MCC‘s Simple Giving.

This Christmas, choose a gift for family and friends that helps one more child sleep in a safe shelter, one more family add to its herd or flock or one more community have safe drinking water from a nearby source. Even a small donation can make a big difference.

Choose between gifts related to giving peace, water, health, hope, livestock, education, relief, or friendship – place your order and receive project-specific Christmas cards to give.