With the holiday season underway and shopping malls teeming with frantic consumers, the blogosphere is equally as busy with environmental websites pushing everything from hemp slippers to vegan Free Trade chocolates to organic cotton hoodies.
At GreenMuze we have decided to take a different tactic, we are not going to push, or even suggest, ‘eco-friendly’ present options for our readers, forgoing the endless lists of green gifts geared towards everyone from your children to your pet. Sure, if something cool and seasonal catches our eye (like a Christmas tree made of recycled bicycle parts or a plastic bag Santa Claus) we will write about it, but there is nothing green about encouraging consumption.
In North America, we overconsume. We drive too big cars, live in enormous homes, drink grande coffee, eat super sized burgers and fill our homes with unnecessary junk made in developing nations by workers paid slave wages, and then shipped thousands of miles to your local WalMart.
We spend endless hours buying, shopping and frankly, wanting and needing. We seem to need to buy and shop as manifestations of our discontentment and malaise. Nowhere is the old adage – money can’t buy happiness – truer than in North America.
Even though purchasing green gifts will support a greener economy, which in turn helps the planet comparatively speaking, there is another option, which is to simply reduce consumption. I tell myself (and anybody that will listen…) that there is nothing green about over-consuming resources. So this holiday, why not take a stand for the Earth and refrain from unnecessary consumption and waste?
If you absolutely need to buy during the holidays, why not consider helping people who really need it? Whether it is hungry children in your own country or sending assistance to people still recovering from natural disasters in Pakistan and Haiti, these people need the basic amenities of food, clothes and shelter much more than your mother needs a set of bamboo pyjamas or your boyfriend needs a solar powered flashlight.
Valerie Williams is a writer living on Salt Spring Island, Canada.
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