Food
Avoid the last minute supermarket dash - head for your local farmer's market or farm shop instead to stock up on food for the festive season.
A weekly veg box makes life easier and saves you lugging round bags of potatoes and carrots. It also saves you a potential drive to the market - a big chunk of your food-related emissions.
Go for a free range, preferably organic, turkey - order from your local butcher in advance - or get an organic one delivered to your door from an organic online butcher.
For meat free Christmas ideas, the Vegetarian Society and the Vegan Society have recipes for soups, nut roasts, pies, stuffings and puds.
For fresh, green seasoning keep pots of evergreen herbs growing close to the kitchen. Herbs that can survive the winter outside include rosemary (add sprigs to soups, casseroles or sprinkle over roast potatoes or meat); sage (a delicious addition to stuffing and nut roasts) and parsley (a favourite for sauces and soups).
Booze
Get the party going with organic wine, beer, cider and spirits and know that your hangover will be that little bit healthier.
On the subject of hangovers, you might also want to try some milk thistle, a detoxifying, immune-boosting herb well known for its ability to enhance liver function. It's available as a tincture from most health food shops.
Christmas trees
• Rent a living Christmas tree. It'll be delivered to your door in a pot (to keep the tree alive) and some feed to keep the tree healthy. When Christmas is over your tree will be collected and returned to the ground.
• Buy from a small-scale sustainable grower and/or make sure your Christmas tree has Forest Steward Council (FSC) accreditation.
• Have a live Christmas tree in a pot that you can take outside to the garden and use next year. If replanting isn't an option and you buy a cut tree then don't throw it out with the rubbish. Most local councils run Christmas tree recycling schemes, or try www.letsrecycle.com
Original gift ideas
Offer a loved one or friend a membership with a difference:
• Buy a friend a subsription to a Green Magazine
From unwanted gifts to wrapping paper, for ideas on reducing your festive footprint and recycling seasonal waste.
It's easy enough to know what to do with paper packaging and glass bottles. Recycling an old laptop, phone or kettle takes more effort but is still important.
Every year, the amount of electrical waste created is astounding. Quantities of 'e-waste' are even greater at Christmas, and with much of this ending up in landfill, we should all be concerned about what happens to the heavy metals used in electronic components once they are buried underground.
The easiest thing to do is take unwanted or broken electronics to your local recycling centre - find out where your nearest site is from the Recycle Now website.
* Look for recycling advice in the product literature or on the website. Dell's one, for example.
* Do a good deed and donate your old technology to a charity this Christmas, or give it away for free online using sites such as freecycle or gumtree. You may no longer have use for it; someone else may well do.
* Make recycling fun and educational by involving family, friends and neighbours. Get in touch with local organisations or councils and set up community electronics recycling days or arrange e-waste collections for your whole street.
How to heat your home the green way
Environmental-issues writer Adria Vasil released Ecoholic Home, her second book, earlier this month. As the weather turns cool, she shares her tips on how to heat your home the green way.
1. Change the furnace filters
Make a habit of replacing filters every three months, Ms. Vasil advises.
“It takes about 10 seconds to do and a Grade 1 kid could do it.”
When she moved into her apartment, the filter hadn't been changed in years. She had the furnace repair guy show her where it was located and put in a new one.
“The curtains were billowing for the first time ever because it was allowing so much air to come from the vents,” she says. “You're crippling your furnace if you let it get clogged.”
2. Seal up drafts
Even if your home is outfitted with the most efficient heating systems, you're still wasting energy if heat is escaping. It can slip out through spaces around windows, and also cracks in doors, electrical sockets, and around pipes.
“You'd imagine that if there was a big hole in the house, you'd fix it. Essentially, all those drafts add up to a hole,” Ms. Vasil explains.
To track drafts, she suggests lighting a stick of incense and walking around your home with it. When you see the stream of smoke shift, you've found one. Use weather-stripping tape, silicone caulking, or electric outlet seals to close things up.
3. Trade in the fireplace for a pellet stove
Ah, the rustic comforts of a crackling fire at home – cozy? Yes. But a good way to heat your home? Hardly.
“Old-fashioned fireplaces leak a lot of heat,” Ms. Vasil says.
Not to mention pump a lot of smog-forming pollutants into the air.
She suggests replicating the ambience of the wood-burning fireplace with a pellet stove: They run on bits made out of agricultural waste or compressed sawdust and burn cleanly.
4. Insulate
If you've sealed all the drafts in your home, there's still one more way to keep that precious heat inside: insulation.
There's a wide array of materials to choose from – fibreglass, mineral wool, natural wool, polyurethane – and each has an R-value that tells you how well the material blocks heat from escaping (the higher, the better).
Ms. Vasil gives top rating to AirKrete, a non-toxic, non-flammable and rodent-proof cement-based foam made of magnesium oxide and ceramic talc. You can install it without worrying about any hazardous properties evaporating into the air.
“I'm a fan of anything where you don't have to kick your families out to put it in,” Ms. Vasil says.
5. Get a programmable thermostat
An antiquated thermostat might make your home warm enough when you're there, but there's no point blasting heat when you're away.
With a programmable thermostat, you can set the temperature to 21 degrees Celsius for when you're awake and at home, and then bring it down to about 18 degrees when you're asleep or at work (“Your pets will be perfectly happy,” Ms. Vasil says). For just a $40 investment you'll see a drop in your energy bills.
1. Change the furnace filters
Make a habit of replacing filters every three months, Ms. Vasil advises.
“It takes about 10 seconds to do and a Grade 1 kid could do it.”
When she moved into her apartment, the filter hadn't been changed in years. She had the furnace repair guy show her where it was located and put in a new one.
“The curtains were billowing for the first time ever because it was allowing so much air to come from the vents,” she says. “You're crippling your furnace if you let it get clogged.”
2. Seal up drafts
Even if your home is outfitted with the most efficient heating systems, you're still wasting energy if heat is escaping. It can slip out through spaces around windows, and also cracks in doors, electrical sockets, and around pipes.
“You'd imagine that if there was a big hole in the house, you'd fix it. Essentially, all those drafts add up to a hole,” Ms. Vasil explains.
To track drafts, she suggests lighting a stick of incense and walking around your home with it. When you see the stream of smoke shift, you've found one. Use weather-stripping tape, silicone caulking, or electric outlet seals to close things up.
3. Trade in the fireplace for a pellet stove
Ah, the rustic comforts of a crackling fire at home – cozy? Yes. But a good way to heat your home? Hardly.
“Old-fashioned fireplaces leak a lot of heat,” Ms. Vasil says.
Not to mention pump a lot of smog-forming pollutants into the air.
She suggests replicating the ambience of the wood-burning fireplace with a pellet stove: They run on bits made out of agricultural waste or compressed sawdust and burn cleanly.
4. Insulate
If you've sealed all the drafts in your home, there's still one more way to keep that precious heat inside: insulation.
There's a wide array of materials to choose from – fibreglass, mineral wool, natural wool, polyurethane – and each has an R-value that tells you how well the material blocks heat from escaping (the higher, the better).
Ms. Vasil gives top rating to AirKrete, a non-toxic, non-flammable and rodent-proof cement-based foam made of magnesium oxide and ceramic talc. You can install it without worrying about any hazardous properties evaporating into the air.
“I'm a fan of anything where you don't have to kick your families out to put it in,” Ms. Vasil says.
5. Get a programmable thermostat
An antiquated thermostat might make your home warm enough when you're there, but there's no point blasting heat when you're away.
With a programmable thermostat, you can set the temperature to 21 degrees Celsius for when you're awake and at home, and then bring it down to about 18 degrees when you're asleep or at work (“Your pets will be perfectly happy,” Ms. Vasil says). For just a $40 investment you'll see a drop in your energy bills.
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Green living: declutter, donate, and enjoy!
The economy is uncertain. Is it a bad time to declutter? Maybe we should save what we have in case we need it some day (maybe sooner than we thought)? Perhaps not. Maybe many of us still suffer from an overabundance of stuff. It will be kinder to ourselves and to the world if we continue to clear out clutter, especially if we can weed out wisely.
If you are having tough economic times, consider using the Internet and other avenues to sell items you don't need. Maybe the cash to pay bills and put food on the table would be more helpful to you right now than the extra stuff at home. Think about wants versus needs as you look through your stuff.
If your circumstances are okay but you are still mired down with extra stuff, consider donating to your favorite charity. When you donate to charity, you help the charity as well as the people who ultimately receive your extras. You also help yourself by creating open spaces in your home as well as time and energy for your priorities.
There is a bonus. We are not just helping ourselves and other people when we donate our extra household goods. We are living green by not adding to a landfill and contributing to our environmental problems. Our extras are finding homes where they are needed and appreciated instead of going to waste.
Maybe our instinct right now is to cling to our stuff. If we have too much and our clutter is draining and frustrating us, then now, more than ever, it is time to let it go. We can relearn that happiness doesn't come from stuff. Acquiring more and more stuff hasn't made people happier and happier.
We have all seen modest uncluttered homes that glow with love and energy--homes where anything is possible: reading a book, playing a game, having a spontaneous get-together with friends or neighbors. Sadly, we have also seen expensive stuff-filled homes that seem to suck the vitality from their owners--homes where the owners would feel too depressed by the clutter around them to sit and read a book, or maybe they wouldn't be able to find the game under the piles of stuff, or perhaps they would be too embarrassed to invite neighbors in to visit.
Maybe it is how we live rather than what we have that creates joy. Perhaps it doesn't matter how much we have. Maybe it matters more whether or not the stuff we have is uncluttered, clean, repaired, and maintained. Our stuff can support us rather than the other way around. If we work to create this kind of environment in our homes, we can help others and we can live a more sustainable life.
Barbara Tako
If you are having tough economic times, consider using the Internet and other avenues to sell items you don't need. Maybe the cash to pay bills and put food on the table would be more helpful to you right now than the extra stuff at home. Think about wants versus needs as you look through your stuff.
If your circumstances are okay but you are still mired down with extra stuff, consider donating to your favorite charity. When you donate to charity, you help the charity as well as the people who ultimately receive your extras. You also help yourself by creating open spaces in your home as well as time and energy for your priorities.
There is a bonus. We are not just helping ourselves and other people when we donate our extra household goods. We are living green by not adding to a landfill and contributing to our environmental problems. Our extras are finding homes where they are needed and appreciated instead of going to waste.
Maybe our instinct right now is to cling to our stuff. If we have too much and our clutter is draining and frustrating us, then now, more than ever, it is time to let it go. We can relearn that happiness doesn't come from stuff. Acquiring more and more stuff hasn't made people happier and happier.
We have all seen modest uncluttered homes that glow with love and energy--homes where anything is possible: reading a book, playing a game, having a spontaneous get-together with friends or neighbors. Sadly, we have also seen expensive stuff-filled homes that seem to suck the vitality from their owners--homes where the owners would feel too depressed by the clutter around them to sit and read a book, or maybe they wouldn't be able to find the game under the piles of stuff, or perhaps they would be too embarrassed to invite neighbors in to visit.
Maybe it is how we live rather than what we have that creates joy. Perhaps it doesn't matter how much we have. Maybe it matters more whether or not the stuff we have is uncluttered, clean, repaired, and maintained. Our stuff can support us rather than the other way around. If we work to create this kind of environment in our homes, we can help others and we can live a more sustainable life.
Barbara Tako
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