Green Paige

The holiday season is a magical time of year when families and friends come together to share memories and celebrate traditions.  One of our most established customs is the giving and receiving of presents.  If you didn’t plan ahead and make your own gifts this year, celebrate by giving gifts that are environmentally-friendly.  Here are some ideas for green gifts and sustainable stocking stuffers that even a green Grinch or a last-minute shopper would approve of.

• Organic Wine - For that special grown-up person in your life, slip a bottle of organic wine from Jack Rabbit Hill in their holiday stocking. 
• Musical Instruments - Ten Thousand Villages features a large selection of natural and earth-friendly gifts including wooden musical instruments, ornaments, toys, games and much more.  Buying gifts from fair trade retailers  means that your purchases will not only make wonderful presents but you will be helping to improve the lives of thousands of artisans in America, Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Middle East. 
• Jewelry - For one-of-a-kind, quillwork jewelry made by handcrafters from Latin America and Native American reservations, visit The Field Guide to Sustainable Gifts at Trees Water People. 
• Toys Powered By Imagination - Sprig Toys manufactures an exciting line of battery-free, eco-friendly, paint-free, kid-powered adventure vehicles and guides for preschoolers.  ImagiPlay has been creating wooden activity toys and animal playsets for over a decade.  They use materials and manufacturing processes that minimize the environmental impact on our planet to create healthy toys free of toxins.  Green Toys features award-winning products with a new take on classic toys like children’s cookware, tea sets, sand toys and gardening kits.  Made in the USA, they are created from 100 percent recycled milk jugs and contain no BPA or phthalates.
• Baby Toys - Sophie The Giraffe is a soft, visually-stimulating teething toy made with natural rubber and non-toxic paint.  It has been loved by generations of kids for 47 years. Cute and cuddly stuffed animals by miYim are produced from ultra-soft, organic cotton which eliminates the threat of toxic chemicals and carcinogenic pesticides in your baby’s snuggly toy.  Maya Organic features a line of handcrafted toys including rattles, danglers, shape sorters and stackers made from replenishable hale wood and natural, non-toxic, vegetable dyes.  Visit Healthy Toys, a consumer action guide to toxic chemicals in toys, to research possible toy purchases.
• Green Games and Kits - For older kids, board games like Earthopoly, Eyes of The Jungle and Harvest Time make wonderful holiday gifts.  Send your kids on a globetrotting adventure to the exotic island of Madagascar with the Xeko Mission card game.  With the Power House Kit, kids can learn to construct a model house complete with solar panels, windmill, greenhouse and desalination system.    
• Green Tales - Stop by your local independant book store  for some last-minute holiday shopping.  Picture books like “The Lorax” by Dr. Seuss, “My Bag and Me” by Karen Farmer and “First Forest” by John Gile make great stocking stuffers.   For older kids, the “Why Should I” series helps them explore the issues of water, energy and wildlife conservation.  Two great resources for living sustainably that will make wonderful gifts for the adults on your shopping list are “Simply Green Giving: Create Beautiful and Organic Wrappings, Tags, and Gifts from Everyday Materials” by Danny Seo  and “Celebrate Green! Creating Eco-Savvy Holidays, Celebrations & Traditions For The Whole Family” by Corey Colwell-Lipson and Lynn Colwell.  “Nature’s Art Box” by Laura C. Martin features 65 cool projects for crafty kids to make with natural materials you can find anywhere. This book makes a great gift for families inspired to make homemade holiday gifts from items found in their own backyard.
• Alternative Transportation - Introduce your children to kid-powered vehicles with the eco-friendly, wooden tricycle made from natural materials by Plan Toys.  All of their products are manufactured utilizing processes that are designed to reduce waste and save energy.   Radio Flyer, known for its red wagons, also makes a green version called the Earth Wagon.  This wagon is made from 100 percent recycled post-consumer HDPE plastic. Over 230 milk jugs are diverted from landfills to make each Earth Wagon.   Comet Skateboards has not only reinvented the wheel but the board too.  They use sustainably harvested bamboo with non-toxic resins to make the hip pin-striping that adorns their boards.  Their manufacturing plant uses a 10KW solar panel array to fuel the process.

This green Grinch, has one last thing to say.  Even if it comes without ribbons.  It comes without tags.  It comes without packages, boxes or bags. Don’t puzzle ’till your puzzler is sore. Celebrate the holidays like never before.  Because Christmas, I believe, doesn’t come from a store.  Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more.

Have a wonderful holiday season.

 Black Friday, the first shopping day after Thanksgiving, has served as the unofficial beginning of the December holiday season since the modern Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade began in 1924.  Black Friday brings to mind throngs of shoppers crowding the roadways and stores spending money they don’t have for gifts that their friends and family don’t need.  This year, start a new tradition.  Give gifts that give back to you, your loved ones and your community.  Here are six ideas for turning the Black Friday tradition into a green holiday season.

1. Give Your Support - Buying goods and services from local businesses is a great way to strengthen community and reduce the environmental impact of transporting goods cross country.  Some cities feature coupon books highlighting local businesses that make great stocking-stuffers.  Visit the Business Alliance For Local Living Economies (BALLE) to view a map of local business networks throughout the US.
2. Give Peace of Mind - Items that help people consume less and live healthier lives definitely qualify as gifts that give back.  Safe, reusable water bottles made from either stainless steel or glass also make wonderful stocking-stuffers.  Fill a gift basket full of compact fluorescent bulbs.  Wrap gifts in reusable shopping or lunch bags made from recycled billboards, soda bottles or tires.  For more ideas, visit Green Logic Earth Friendly Goods .
3. Give a Fair Share - Surprise your loved ones this year with a vegetable, fruit or flower share from a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) farm. You will not only be supporting local economies but you will be giving the gift of healthy food.  Visit Local Harvest  for a list of CSA farms near you.
4. Give of Yourself - Your time is probably the most valuable gift you can give. Volunteer for a local organization in the name of a loved one. If your grandmother loves to read, volunteer at your public or school library. If your brother is a pet lover, volunteer at a local animal shelter or rescue. If your mother loves flowers, volunteer at a community garden.  Visit the United Way to locate volunteer opportunities in your county.
5. Give Credit - Instead of using your credit cards this holiday season, give carbon credits.  Purchasing carbon credits doesn’t mitigate the effects of global warming by itself but it does support carbon dioxide reduction programs by funneling your money into projects like wind power development.  The Choice Bundle, offered by Renewable Choice Energy, is a carbon credit package you can purchase as a gift for your family and friends.  It will offset the environmental impact of an entire family’s carbon usage for one month.  This year, save a lump of coal by putting carbon credits in your family’s Christmas stockings.
6. Give Again - Give a gift that keeps giving and giving.  Host a regifting party.  Contact the United Way to locate a nonprofit agency that serves your community.  Ask this agency for a wish list of items they need to support the services they provide.  Send the wish list to your guests and ask them to bring their new or gently used regifted items to the party.  Send the items to the agency of your choice. 

In 1992 Buy Nothing Day was created as an alternative to Black Friday, an opportunity for people to take a time-out to examine the issue of over-consumption.  This year, take Buy Nothing Day to a new level and institute a green holiday season where money is saved, zero waste is created and the gifts you give continue to give back long after the Christmas trees have turned to mulch.

Every year, I try to find ways to make our holiday celebrations a little bit more sustainable.  Here are my tips for natural holiday decorations:

1. Support a local business.  Take the family to a Christmas tree farm and purchase either a live tree or cut one yourself.  Visit the National Christmas Tree Associate to locate a farm near you.
2. Use LED lights.  They might not be natural but they are energy-efficient and environmentally-friendly.  Visit your city website to see if they have a program in place that encourages residents to recycle old, traditional holiday lights and receive discounts on LED light strands.
3. Decorate your tree with homemade cookie ornaments and strings of popcorn and cranberries that can be strung outside after the holidays to feed the birds.
4. When decking the halls, go au natural with items found near your home like herbs, pinecones, acorns, gourds, apples, wood, smooth stones, nuts and evergreen boughs.
5. Make your own fragrant holiday centerpieces from mixed evergreens, eucalyptus and fresh flowers.
6. Celebrate Hanukkah naturally with beeswax candles, a recycled glass menorah, fair trade chocolate coins and a sustainable wooden dreidel.  Visit the Coalition on the Environment and Jewish Life  for inspirational ideas.
7. Use organically grown fruits and corn to represent mazao and vibunzi during Kwanzaa.  Create your own kinara from found wood and adorn it with natural beeswax candles.  For more ideas, visit the Official Kwanzaa Website.
8. Make a yule log to celebrate the Winter Solstice.  Collect a piece of found wood and embellish it with tiny pinecones; dried berries; nuts; cuttings of mistletoe, holly and ivy; feathers and cinnamon sticks.  Tie a ribbon around it and use it as a holiday decoration until you burn it during your solstice celebration.

Leave a comment and share your ideas for creating natural holiday decorations. 

I remember the day when our neighborhood market closed its doors.  I felt that an important part of my childhood was disappearing along with the home-made snickerdoodles-one free to each customer.  We have all heard that corporate globalization is causing the decline of locally-owned businesses and family farms but what can we do about it here in our own community?  If you ask someone from The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE), their answer would probably be to buy local.

BALLE is  an umbrella organization of more than 55 smaller networks.  It serves to inform, educate and support local, independent business alliances.  These smaller independent business networks offer opportunities for local businesses to connect.  Their goal is to support community-based businesses, encourage local purchasing by customers and businesses, advocate programs and policies that strengthen independent businesses and promote social equity and environmental responsibility.

Buy Local Week is December 1st -7th.  This year with our economy the weakest it’s been in years, the Local First movement is encouraging people to buy their goods from local, independently-owned businesses.  Why?

1. Buying goods and services from local businesses is a great way to strengthen community.

2. It reduces the environmental impact of transporting items cross country. 

3. Buying local gives us an opportunity to be part of a cooperative movement to create an alternative to corporate globalization and bring economic power back to our communities through a sustainable local economy.

4. Locally-made foods and crafts make great gifts because they are unique and often come with a story attached.  I still own the doll that I received as a Christmas present when I was 6 years old.  It was hand-crafted by our neighbor to resemble me right down to the dimple under my left eye. My daughter loves to hear the tale of how this doll was made.  These are the kinds of stories that you don’t get with items made on assembly lines by machines, sold in big box stores.

This week, communities throughout North America will be celebrating Buy Local Week with events, contests and poster campaigns.  To locate a locally-owned business in your area, visit BALLE.  They list networks of independently-owned businesses across the nation. 

The holiday season for us kicks-off in early October with a series of birthday celebrations.  Knowing how crazy things can get when you are trying to plan a birthday party, last year I decided to start compiling ideas for eco-friendly parties that can be used for any celebration.  Here are a few of my ideas:

• Reading Rainbow Party  -Plan the fantasy party of your child’s dreams with a little help from a locally-owned, independent bookstore.  Most stores will help you design craft activities and a storytime in the theme of your child’s choice.  Instead of goody bags filled with plastic toys, allow each child to pick out their own paperback book to take home as a memento.  You can include a gift wish list with your invitation that features book titles of your child’s choosing.  Parents and kids will have a wonderful adventure in this story-lovers paradise while supporting a local business.  The American Booksellers Association’s  membership directory can help you locate an independent book store in your area.

• Where The Wild Things Party -   If your kids are wild about animals, invite a local animal rescue association to your next party.   Call and find out if they have a trained handler on staff who will bring their live animals to your party so that the kids can learn first-hand about wildlife conservation and the environment.  Staff members should be able to help you put together a list of gift suggestions for items like bowls and bandages that can be purchased in the name of the birthday child then donated to the animal rescue association.  Generally, the fee to have the animals and their trained handlers come to your party goes towards the care and rehabilitation of those animals.  To locate an animal rescue association in your area, visit AnimalShelter.org or RescueDirectory.com.

• The Secret Garden Party -  Indulge your child’s desire to dig in the dirt, splash in puddles and chase leaves in the wind.  Create an Earth-friendly party at a community garden, botanical center or in your own backyard.   Most botanical gardens offer party packages that include a tour of the children’s garden and an age-appropriate planting activity.  You can create your own by giving each child their own flower or herb to plant in a decorative container.  This will  serve as their party souvenir.  If weather permits, utilize picnic tables for enjoying birthday cake and other party treats.  If you are celebrating at a botanical garden, ask the staff to put together a suggestion list of items like binoculars or field guides that can be purchased in the name of the birthday girl or boy and then given to the gardens for educational use.

• Arts And Crafts Party - Contact a local art museum or art teacher to  help you craft a party that will let your child’s creative energy flow.  Ask the museum if your guests can get a guided tour of the museum then create a scavenger hunt sheet to help kids locate various works of art.   Some museums even offer a fun, age-appropriate art activity that allows them to make their own take-home gift or you can create one yourself.  Let museum staff help you put together a wish list of materials that can be purchased in the birthday child’s name and then contributed to the museum for future programs.  The USA Museum Database can assist you in locating a museum in your area.

• Get Cooking Party - Encourage your kids to play with their food.  Create an organic cooking party with your birthday boy or girl.  Take them shopping at a Farmer’s Market or natural food store for the ingredients and then let them and their guests decorate their own birthday cupcakes with organic frosting and fresh, local fruit.  For summertime parties,  help your pint-sized guests whip up an organic ice cream bar.  For souvenirs, put together a small booklet with copies of the recipes you made and pictures of the birthday child and guests as they create their birthday party treats.  As a gift suggestion for this party theme ask guests to make donations to your local food bank. 

• More Ideas - If you are still feeling a bit overwhelmed at the thought of planning an environmentally-friendly birthday party, visit Birthdays Without Pressure.  Created by parents who believe that children’s parties are getting too extravagant, this resource gives parents alternative ideas for designing birthday celebrations that are fun and sustainable.  This site includes a birthday pressure quiz, resources for parent educators and an opportunity to share experiences that will help you create your own green party.

If you have more ideas for eco-friendly celebrations, please post a comment.  Look for my “7 Tips For Creating A Zero Waste Halloween Party” later this week. 

It’s Thursday afternoon and in our house, chaos rules.  Squealing toddlers are racing cardboard cars through a miniature town made from egg cartons, toilet paper tubes and plastic tubs.  Animated conversation surrounds our kitchen table as kids and parents help each other craft decoupage treasure boxes from discarded wrapping paper.  Intermittent bursts of laughter radiate from our family room where teens take turns playing game-show host for an environmental quiz they created themselves.  April, with its spring flowers and gentle rains, is here at last.  Our neighborhood is celebrating with an Earthday party.

How on Earth did this all begin?  One day while unpacking from our cross-country move, I noticed that my toddler was completely ignoring her big basket of colorful toys in favor of a large, brown appliance box.  I watched as she happily moved her favorite doll, an old shoe box and several empty yogurt containers into her cardboard play house.  Peeking through the corrugated shutters, she gave me her happy-face smile, the smile that is all teeth and pure joy.  “Me home, mommy,” she announced.  This statement provoked my own happy-face smile and gave me an idea.

I phoned the only neighbor I knew on our street and casually mentioned this crazy notion I had about hosting a neighborhood Earthday party.  I suggested that if each family came armed with wrapping paper, boxes and other materials left-over from the holidays or salvaged from their recycle bins, we could all have a great time creating crafts and games that would be fun and educational.  She loved the idea and quickly called another neighbor who called another neighbor.  Within a day, I had met more neighbors via the phone and in person than I had met in the entire time I had lived in the area. My wild idea for a neighborhood Earthday party had become a reality.

Create Your own Earthday Party

From that first experience, I learned that coordinating a neighborhood Earthday party is not only a great way to bring neighbors together but also an excellent opportunity to promote environmental awareness in our community. Here are a few ideas to help you organize your own neighborhood Earthday party:

• Invitations - Create fun not waste. If you know your neighbors, call them up and invite them personally or email them.  Visit a social-planning site like Evite.com that allows you to choose an Earthday-themed invitation design. Personalize it with party date and location specifics and email it directly to your neighbors.  If you prefer hand-delivering invitations, consider making recycled Earthday postcards by cutting the fronts off of old greeting cards and writing your message on the back. 

• Decorations and Supplies - Decorate naturally. Take your family on a spring flower safari and pick just enough flowers to brighten up your house. Enforce a zero-waste policy by using real plates, silverware, napkins and cups to serve food and drinks rather than disposable party supplies.

• Food and Drinks - Invite each of your neighbors to bring a signature dish for everyone to try while you supply the organic beverages and dessert. Introduce your neighbors to organic food from your local co-op, CSA farm or market.

• Activities - Make sure the crafts and games that you plan are fun, educational and age-appropriate for all the kids who will be attending your party. The EPA website has some great suggestions for Earthday activities suitable for all ages. Download their 11-page coloring book with tips to help kids care for the Earth not only on Earthday but every day.  For younger children, try building a miniature city from items in your recycle bin. Used boxes, canisters, plastic bottles and milk cartons can be repurposed into tiny houses, toy cars, play boats and even a choo-choo train. For more suggestions, visit PBS.

• More Ideas - Make a difference in your community by planting trees or flowers at a neighborhood church or school. Organize a community clean up.  Encourage your neighbors to volunteer their time to help a local environmental group.  For more ideas, visit The Heartland All Species Project  which has scripts for environmental plays and skits as well as directions for creating an Earthday parade or go to Earthday.gov  for links to several Earthday sites.

This article also appears in the April 2008 issue of Rocky Mountain Parent Magazine under the title “Earthday Party.”