Environmentalist JoAnne Fleming, a former candidate for the Green Party of Canada, offers gift-giving tips to help reduce your carbon footprint over the holidays.
New Ways of Holiday Giving
Reduce excessive consumption, credit card debt, and a large carbon footprint during the holiday season by changing how you see your choices. It’s not about deprivation, it’s about innovation and learning to live more consciously with a conscience.
Where does stuff come from? We have the luxury of purchasing everything. The mining, farming, processing and manufacturing of multiple materials, and the great distances the parts, and final products are shipped creates a lot of carbon dioxide. You can reduce your arbon footprint, and the social and environmental impacts, by reducing the number of items purchased.
Give with heart and remember we are our children’s ancestors, and our choices matter.
Gift ideas for adults
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Give your time, talents and services. Your time and talents are priceless. Write gift certificates to bake, shovel snow, repair something, offer rides, take time to share a cup of coffee or a meal together.
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Adopt a needy family and your family gifts are for the needy family, delivered early.
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Make a family donation to a charity of choice instead of gifts.
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Draw names to reduce the number of gifts purchased.
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Reduce the dollar-value of gifts drastically. Let them be a token rather than a measure of the relationships.
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Give only homemade gifts - baking, sewing, art, woodworking, jamming, etc.
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Give only gifts purchased locally, or made locally.
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Shop at local stores instead of online to provide local families with jobs. Online shopping is convenient, but the energy used (carbon footprint) to deliver each of your online orders to your door is huge.
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Plan a special family experience rather than exchanging gifts.
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Invite family and friends to bring several new and gently used items no longer wanted. Enjoy social time, and everyone can choose gifts from the table to take home for self, or as gifts for others. This is a new fun way to shop and exchange gifts! No charge!
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Give only second-hand gifts from garage sales, second-hand stores, or items you no longer want or use.
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Buy gifts that give twice - from stores and organizations supporting an environmental or social cause.
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Purchase tickets to a concert or theatre series for yourself, and also a second set. Gift each ticket of the set to different people, and enjoy a special experience with each of them.
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Invite others who are alone, or new to the neighbourhood, to your holiday events. New people enrich your holiday traditions, and they are so grateful to be included.
Gift ideas for kids
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Give them a bird feeder, birdseed, and identification book, or app, along with your continued interest to install, fill regularly, record sightings, and discuss together.
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Give art supplies and make art together regularly. Think watercolours or pastels. Let your creativity and imagination play. Go to art galleries together and discuss techniques, what they like, or don’t like about different works of art. What is the artist trying to say to the viewer? Look at art books from the library together.
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Give them music! Bring out your old guitar or trumpet or whatever you have and play it, share it, add your stories. Choose an instrument they have expressed an interest in. Attend concerts together and discuss music choices, combinations of instruments, what they like and dislike and why. Ask them about their music tastes, and listen to it together. Take advantage of free concerts, especially in the summertime.
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Give homemade gift certificates to explore your community together – historic sites, attractions, famous people, cemeteries, trails, architecture, street names, galleries. Suggest they research more places you could visit together in the region ask others for suggestions. Growing a sense of place and connection to a community is important so they will want to protect its history and natural resources.
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Give them homemade gift certificates for regular nature experiences – regular waterside walks, woods and trail walks, birding, stargazing. Share what you know, and invite someone who can teach you more. Learn together to identify birds, trees, plants, constellations.
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Give ‘Fun Life Skills’ Gift Certificates. Spend quality time together cooking, baking, jamming, learning how to use basic tools, make minor repairs, knit, crochet, sew, how to sew on a button, raise or lower a hem, repair a seam, iron etc.
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Give a child a membership to the YMCA or a sports team, and give a second membership to another child who cannot afford it. Teach a child that not every child has the same opportunities as he/she has, and give them the pleasure of sharing the privilege.
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Make a financial donation to a child’s education, or travel fund.
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Give houseplants and help learn how to identify and care for them. Visit plant shops together, and enjoy the diversity of plants available.
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Plan and create a garden together. Add books and websites to build knowledge. Share your garden stories and introduce them to other gardeners. Tour gardens in all seasons to discover what is happening at ground level, and what may be happening underground. Choose seeds to start together.
Gift ideas for seniors
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Give a collection of household paper products so they do not have to contend with bringing home big, awkward items from the store. Offer to restock as needed.
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Give easy to prepare frozen single servings of favourite entrees and treats. Make yourself, or purchase. Senior budgets are often tight and favourite foods, including fresh fruits and vegetables are appreciated. Also, a collection of favourite canned and packaged foods in small sizes that they could not normally buy, would be appreciated.
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Invite seniors to share their stories. They want opportunities to be heard and have wisdom to share. Record their stories to share with family.
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Your presence is your best gift for them. Share coffee time, a meal, a listening ear, and enjoy a family photo album together.
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The next best thing, is to send cards and notes regularly. These will sit on the table for months reminding them of you, and it comforts them. They are of the snail-mail era, and mail still means more to them than to you.
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Give collections of their favourite music for easy listening on their technology. (with instructions)
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Give them the yarns, fabrics, and tools to teach a grandchild to knit or crochet or quilt.
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A welcome gift is ‘take them out’ from their home, retirement home, or nursing home. A change of scenery is a priceless gift. Ask where they would like to go today. The isolation of loss of freedom when losing personal mobility and/or no longer driving is traumatic. Take them for a drive around town, the countryside, familiar places, look at the ski slopes where they used to ski and encourage them to remember and share. Enjoy coffee or lunch together at a new or favourite place. Invite them in advance, so they can anticipate the outing and think of where they would like to go.
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Give tickets to an event and you will pick them up and share the time together. They will look forward to the event with great anticipation.
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Offer to take them shopping once a month and encourage them to prepare a list.
Less, local simple: holiday preparation suggestions to reduce stress and your carbon footprint
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Be bold and have the courage to create new holiday traditions that are not as stressful to you, your budget, or the planet.
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Be realistic about the amount of holiday decorating you do. No need to buy more decorations. Use fresh local greens and berries if needed.
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Plan simpler menus and use locally sourced foods when possible for soups, stews, chilli, and lasagna - hearty, healthy, less expensive, and much less stressful.
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Serve some vegetarian entrees. The Carbon Footprint is so much smaller.
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Choose local wines, beers and ciders and support local businesses.
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Serve alternatives to alcohol such as local cider, mulled cider, and homemade sparkling water.
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Choose to avoid using disposable plates, glasses and cutlery. Enlist the help of everyone to help with dishes. Rent or borrow what you need.
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Rethink gift giving and give your presence rather than Stuff. Choosing to nurture relationships thoughtfully, is a win-win for self and the planet.
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Do gift wrap differently - no more wrapping paper! Use pillow cases, tea towels, scarves, reused Kleenex boxes, gift bags transformed from clothing…use your imagination, or make it a treasure hunt instead of wrapping gifts.
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Travel less. Fewer and shorter car trips. Fewer, if any, flights reduces your carbon footprint.
