| But the message is far more complicated than just buy nothing. It's that we have to not just step aside for consumerism to keep chugging along, we really have to change the way we live.
The piece goes on to have suggestion from buy only green products, not just green but a composting toilet to thrift store items for presents, "unwrapped and unloved." That the change we need to make is beyond merely not shopping this one day and going on to spend our money the next three weeks in the exact same way we might have today. At least that's how I read it. But we have to change how we consume every single day of the year.
So here are some ideas for gifts this year that you can give instead of the junk that was made in China. I know that these are not gifts for everyone on your lists, you know your friends and family, you make the choice. Or you can give this list to those people you know that love to give and ask them gently to do this for you this year, that this is what your heart wants the most.
Here are some things I would love this year but haven't had the money to give to or purchase from, some are non-profits and some are very cool eco friendly products.
Ever want to join a CSA? Ask for a loved one to help you join, buy your first month of produce! Get your started! Don't know if you have one near you? That's easy! Hey even your Republican relatives should get behind this, it's called supporting your local economy people.
Community Supported Agriculture - Local Harvest
Community Supported Agriculture
Thinking about signing up for a CSA but want to learn more about the idea before you commit? Read on.
Over the last 20 years, Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) has become a popular way for consumers to buy local, seasonal food directly from a farmer. Here are the basics: a farmer offers a certain number of "shares" to the public. Typically the share consists of a box of vegetables, but other farm products may be included. Interested consumers purchase a share (aka a "membership" or a "subscription") and in return receive a box (bag, basket) of seasonal produce each week throughout the farming season.
This arrangement creates several rewards for both the farmer and the consumer. In brief...
Advantages for farmers:
* Get to spend time marketing the food early in the year, before their 16 hour days in the field begin
* Receive payment early in the season, which helps with the farm's cash flow
* Have an opportunity to get to know the people who eat the food they grow
Advantages for consumers:
* Eat ultra-fresh food, with all the flavor and vitamin benefits
* Get exposed to new vegetables and new ways of cooking
* Usually get to visit the farm at least once a season
* Find that kids typically favor food from "their" farm - even veggies they've never been known to eat
* Develop a relationship with the farmer who grows their food and learn more about how food is grown
 How about a National Park's Pass for Christmas? I would love this as an incentive to travel. I know, traveling adds to green house gasses. I would take a train up and down California to our parks, Yosemite, Sequoia, you name it, we're blessed with an amazing Park's system and they need our support. Our family is thinking of spending the New year outside of Yosemite. What a beautiful way to ring in 2010.
Heifer International
Heifer International is a non-profit organization whose goal is to help end world hunger and poverty through self-reliance & sustainability.
For Black Friday and Cyber Monday, millions of people will brave traffic jams and long lines for the latest gadgets, deals and thrills. Just imagine if even a portion of those buyers chose Heifer Holiday gifts that would help end hunger and poverty!
Pangea Organics
 What I love about Pangea, their packaging is biodegradable and can become plants, yes, you can plant them. I love it. And of course their webpage isn't working well so I got this from Treehugger...
...sustainable packaging with their biodegradable soap and gift boxes. "You can actually plant one, and grow a tree!," she says. "Colorado Blue Spruce Seeds are embedded in each box."
Native Foods
This is my favorite local Vegan restaurant and I would love some gift cards here. All their to go boxes are biodegradable and their "plastic" ware is also corn based biodegradable as well. There is probably a local one for some of you. Ask for a gift card to your favorite planet friendly eatery.
Back to Natives Restoration
I know this doesn't help you again, but this is just one of my favorite local non-profits that does restoration of Native California habitats and helps people rid themselves of their lawns to replace them with California drought tolerant native plants. Today they had a "Buy Nothing Day Hike in the Forest".
To Go Ware
 Every year, about 300 billion pounds of plastic is produced around the world, and only a fraction is recycled. Where does the rest end up? Well, the majority ends up in landfills, but some finds its way into our oceans. Plastic is valued for its resistance to degradation, so its life span can be hundreds of years. When plastic reaches our oceans, it eventually breaks down due to the action of the sun, wind, and currents, into small, literally bite sized pieces that wildlife confuse with food. It's an easy mistake to make.
I really want these! We're trying to eat out less but when we do, these are great for leftovers and to go orders. I'm serious. And please, just because Oprah had them on, doesn't mean it's bad. They do bamboo utensil sets for on the go and great stainless steel lunch sets. You know you want one too.
Child Fund - Gift for Children in Need
ChildFund International is inspired and driven by the potential that is inherent in all children; the potential not only to survive but to thrive, to become leaders who bring positive change for those around them.
The heart of ChildFund International remains the one-to-one connection made through child sponsorship. Our work began in 1938 with an effort to build orphanages for the children who had been left without homes or families in the wake of the second Sino-Japanese War.
These orphanages were funded by individuals in America who "sponsored" an orphaned child in China. This approach continues today.
The Books you might want to read...
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer
Jonathan Safran Foer spent much of his teenage and college years oscillating between omnivore and vegetarian. But on the brink of fatherhood-facing the prospect of having to make dietary choices on a child's behalf-his casual questioning took on an urgency His quest for answers ultimately required him to visit factory farms in the middle of the night, dissect the emotional ingredients of meals from his childhood, and probe some of his most primal instincts about right and wrong. Brilliantly synthesizing philosophy, literature, science, memoir and his own detective work, Eating Animals explores the many fictions we use to justify our eating habits-from folklore to pop culture to family traditions and national myth-and how such tales can lull us into a brutal forgetting.
Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide by Nicholas D. Kristof, Sheryl WuDunn
Two Pulitzer Prize winners expose the most pervasive human rights violation of our era...the oppression of women in the developing world...and tell us what we can do about it.
An old Chinese proverb says "Women hold up half the sky." Then why do the women of Africa and Asia persistently suffer human rights abuses? Continuing their focus on humanitarian issues, journalists Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn take us to Africa and Asia, where many women live in profoundly dire circumstances...and some succeed against all odds.
Ocean Friendly Gardens: A How-To Gardening Guide to Help Restore a Healthy Coast and Ocean Douglas Kent (Author, Illustrator) - Doug is my instructor for my Restoration class, all proceeds go to Surfrider Foundation
Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What We Can Do to Fix It by Jill Richardson
And to transition from movies to books, you can get the book or the documentary or both if you are ambitious. Ken Burns did an amazing documentary on the National Parks entitled America's Best Idea. It goes through the political ups and downs of the creation of our National Parks with breathtaking still and moving photography. I only saw bits and pieces but it's a must for anyone who cares a lick about the history of our national parks and wants to see them continue to stay intact. They most certainly were one of our best ideas.
Food Inc.
Examining our Food industry. Hard to stomach.
The Cove
 Maybe you've seen it all, and maybe you're already steeped in outraged, activist documentaries. But you haven't seen anything quite like The Cove, unless you can visualize a disturbing combination of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle, Free Willy, and the killing of Bambi's mother. The Cove is directed by the experienced National Geographic photographer Louie Psihoyos, who sets about to uncover a shocking (but regular) ritual on the Japanese coast: the herding and slaughter of thousands of bottlenose dolphins in the town of Taiji. A few dolphins are saved during this process, and sold off to aquariums so they can perform in water shows. The rest are crowded together and--away from prying eyes--stabbed to death, their meat sold as food. (Interviewing Japanese people on the street, they apparently have no idea that the "whale meat" on sale in stores is actually mercury-saturated bottlenose dolphin.) ... -Robert Horton
If you have your own suggestions, please put in comments, I have lots more but I wanted to keep it short. These are just some ideas of mine and some things I would love to donate to or get myself.
To end as Lloyd Alter of Treehugger does...
But I have reconsidered my ambivalence since last year, after the death of Jdimytai Damour, when I learned that commercialism and marketing can make people so crazy that they would trample someone to death in search of a bargain. It is time to slow down, to rethink the way we spend and what we buy. Perhaps applying the lessons of the slow movement to shopping: Take your time, go local, go healthy and green.
Or maybe, once a year, buy nothing, a day of consumer silence, celebrating Jdimytai Damour Day, who died because of this insanity.
The insanity is no accident, this is merely the byproduct of our widening wealth disparity, between the haves and have-nots. People who work very hard all year have a very small window where they see an opportunity to own something that they may not be able to afford all year round. This is what I think. They want what they usually can't have and they get up at 3 in the morning or wait all night in line so they can afford a bit of something they think they must have. That is the tragedy of the last eight years (Or just one of the many of course) that people have bought the lie that they are lacking in things. That the Government wants to take their money so they can't buy these things rather than have health care, affordable education for their kids, decent paying jobs, safe and healthy foods at their fingertips, the list goes on and on. They bought a lot of lies. |
But most importantly, it is the first anniversary of the death of Jdimytai Damour, who was trampled to death by the opening rush at a store in Valley Stream, NY. He was 6'4" and 270 pounds, a "gentle giant to his friends" but that wasn't enough. According to the New York Times, "Just before the store's scheduled 5 a.m. opening the doors shattered under the weight of the crowd. Mr. Damour was thrown to the floor and trampled."
