Greener Good

Save-the-Planet Holidays

This year, choose gifts that wonít harm the environment

When Steve Thomas, host of Planet Green’s Renovation Nation, thinks about the Christmas gifts that meant a lot to his son when he was young, he remembers the year he gave Sam — barely out of toddlerhood — a battery-operated screw gun. “We spent hours with a handful of drywall screws and a two-by-four,” Thomas remembers. Or he recalls the year he made his son a tool bench, a gift that Sam, now 22, still cherishes. “The act of making something puts you in touch with the natural world, and I think those are really powerful experiences for kids and parents,” says Thomas.

It’s not just hammer-wielding television personalities who are taking steps to reduce their carbon footprint this time of year, when profligacy traditionally overpowers environmental thinking. Take Karen Schiff, co-founder of Ecobunga! — an online source for giveaways and deals on green products and services. Five years ago, when her niece and nephew were 7 and 4, Schiff began a tradition of making an annual contribution to a travel fund in lieu of tangible gifts. “The kids love it,” she says. Every year, along with the checks, I send a Hanukkah card that lists a few more countries they could visit.”

Ask Tim Kniser, a public school teacher in Portland, Ore., what makes a greener holiday and he’ll wax on about the living Christmas tree he and his wife, Beckie Lee, a county government employee, welcome each year. The couple decided several years ago to forgo the tradition of buying a cut tree for their home, but they had no interest in a plastic, odorless, manufactured tree. So they became customers of the Original Living Christmas Tree Company, a Portland business that buys live trees from growers and delivers them — rootball and all — to customers in mid-December. After the holidays, the company picks up the trees and sells them back to landscapers, who replant them. “No one seems to notice that our trees are a little more ‘wild’ than usual.  And we have found we get more attached to trees with little quirks,” Kniser says.

For others, environmental consciousness around the holidays is a matter of making any small change they can. More than 2 billion holiday cards make their way around the United States each year, according to Hallmark Research. Tommy Rosen, the Los Angeles–based founder of Eco Gift Festival, a holiday gift show, keeps that number in mind. “We send only recycled cards printed with nontoxic inks,” he says. “Those of us who light the menorah do so with soy-based candles without chemicals.” And Rosen completely eschews meat for holiday celebrations. The eco footprint of regularly eating meat is tough to justify, he says. Indeed, a 2006 report published by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization states that the livestock sector generates 18 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, even more than transportation produces.

Another big culprit of holiday energy consumption — no surprise here — is holiday lights, which added some $4.7 billion to Americans’ electric bills last year. That’s why Dave Walton, director of home ideas for Direct Energy, a Houston-based provider of energy-related services, has switched to LED bulbs, which consume significantly less energy than incandescent bulbs. According to Pacific Gas and Electric, the difference over the season in energy costs for a 300-light string of large incandescents compared with the same number of LED lights is close to $70. Walton also suggests using a timer to turn lights off when you’re sleeping or away from home.

Perhaps the most heartening thing about green consciousness is how it’s morphing to fit many cultures and religions. Witness the Ramadan Compact, initiated in 2007 by the DC Green Muslims, a Washington, D.C., group that’s working to promote eco-conscious living. Participants pledged to forgo everything but essentials for the month of Ramadan. According to group member Sanjana Ahmad, those habits have carried over into this year’s Ramadan as well as the Muslim celebration of Eid al-Adha, which falls in December this year. When eco-conscious Muslims give holiday gifts, says Ahmad, “we are looking for things that aren’t going to end up in a landfill. The Ramadan Compact created a consciousness about how we consume and how that’s linked to the current environmental situation.”

In a similar spirit, Renovation Nation host Thomas encourages budding environmentalists to see hard times as an impetus to focus on the environment. “This year in particular, it’s good to think about what you can do to celebrate holidays in a way that reflects a different attitude toward the planet,” he says.