Holiday Doesn't Have To Be Environmentally Unfriendly
Friday November 23, 2007
CityNews.ca Staff
As the holidays approach we begin to think about giving and receiving, but given the hundreds of thousands of tonnes of waste generated every Christmas on items like gift wrap and cards, maybe the focus should be on reusing and recycling.
But a ‘green’ holiday needn’t be a joyless one – there are plenty of ways to enjoy those beloved traditions and celebrations without harming the planet.
One relatively painless thing you can do is cut down on the amount of paper you use for gift-wrapping. Save gift bags and tissue you’ve received in the past and reuse it. If you’re getting more than one gift for somebody, consolidate the items in one wrapped package or gift bag if possible.
‘Snail mail’ may be largely a thing of the past, but not when it comes to Christmas cards. We love sending them, we love receiving them. Unfortunately they also represent a lot of paper waste. Lots of sites offer free e-cards, (Hallmark, American Greetings)which are an easy option – not to mention cheaper than buying cards and stamps. If you don’t want to give up the traditional paper card, look for one that’s made with recycled paper.
As for the paper cards that you receive, don’t throw them out at the end of the season. Save them and turn them into other holiday ornaments for next year. You can turn it into a craft project for the kids. Here are some suggestions.
There are ways to cut down on energy use during the holiday as well. Christmas trees and houses all alight look beautiful but they also use a lot of power. That’s not to say you should be a Grinch and avoid decorating – but think about turning off the lights on the tree, around the house, and outside when you’re not at home.
There are also adornments that use less energy, like LED Christmas lights instead of the traditional electric variety. They’ll save money and are environmentally friendly.
As for what you put your lights on – the Christmas tree – the artificial variety has come a long way over the years. Many look just like the real thing, and it saves a real tree from getting the axe. If you’re feeling especially whimsical this year go for an upside-down Christmas tree. And if you long for that unmistakable scent of real pine, you can always buy some boughs or a wreath. As for what’s more environmentally sustainable – a real tree or an artificial tree – the debate rages on. Here’s an article that might help you decide.
For more on how to have an eco-friendly holiday, check out:
Eco-Friendly Christmas Lights – Green Daily
Sierra Club’s Green Holiday advice
True Cost of Food
We vote three times a day. With every meal we can choose to help the environment or to harm it.
EAT Local:
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If you care about global warming, don’t buy food that has traveled hundreds or thousands of miles by plane and truck to get to you.
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If you care about open spaces, buy food that is grown on small local farms, which help keep open spaces from being paved over.
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If you care about stopping sprawl, buy from local producers rather than from big chain stores.
EAT Organic:
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If you care about biodiversity and endangered species, don’t buy food that is produced with toxic pesticides, which kill all sorts of creatures.
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If you care about global warming, don’t buy food that is grown with petroleum-based fertilizers.
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If you care about clean air, water and soil, look for food that is grown on farms where farmers don’t use chemical pesticides that are sprayed from the air and leach into the water and soil.
EAT more vegetables, fruits, nuts, grains, and seeds
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If you care about forests, wild places, biodiversity, and endangered species, you should know that a leading cause of deforestation in the Americas and elsewhere is the raising of cattle and their feed.
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If you care about clean water and soil, don’t buy meat from factory farms where animals are raised in confined operations so that their wastes poison the air, soil and water around them.
“Sustainability means living in such a way that there are enough resources to live well, in an alive, thriving environment—indefinitely.” Jon Jeavons, author of How to Grow More Vegetables. . . A sustainable system is one that can be maintained with minimal use of scarce resources from outside the system; with minimal negative impact on the planet; and with maximum benefit for the producer.
Substitute sustainable agriculture for the industrial model based on pesticides, herbicides and poorly tested genetically engineered foods. Getting rid of outrageous subsidies and restoring family farms is only a first, relatively easy step. Next comes making serious public investment in agricultural research, to put the world’s cumulative, sophisticated knowledge of plant ecology to work.
From: Strategic Ignorance —Why the Bush Administration Is Recklessly Destroying a Century of Environmental Progress. by Carl Pope
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Eat the greatest variety of the least processed food and eat less of it.
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Buy organic whenever you can. Organic farmers don’t use the chemicals that are polluting our water, air, and soil.
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Start your own organic garden—you can never get fresher food than by growing it yourself!
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Eat less meat. Fruits, vegetables, grains, beans, and seeds are healthier and more sustainable
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Eat with family and friends; learn to cook; share recipes and your knowledge of sustainability.
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Buy grass-fed, free-range, or pasture-raised meat and dairy.
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Try “Sustainable Tuesdays”—learn more about this at www.sierraclub.org/sustainable_consumption/
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Shop at farmers’ markets and farmstands; find one at www.localharvest.org or sustainabletable.org
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Join a CSA, a food co-op that supports a local farm. Check www.csacenter.org.
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If you choose fish, eat fish that is raised sustainably. Learn more at www.seafood.audubon.org.
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Ask restaurants, stores, and schools where they get their food. Support those that buy locally.
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See www.chefscollaborative.com, www.dinegreen.com.
FAMILY ACTIVITIES
Young children can’t fully comprehend the science behind the decisions to eat safe food—but that doesn’t mean it’s too soon to involve them.
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Plant seeds and watch them grow. You can grow lettuce or herbs in 3-inch pots on a sunny windowsill. If you have room, try squash or tomatoes in the ground or in 5-gallon pots. No yard? Look for a community garden.
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Make composting a family activity. Here’s a way to ensure that your kids will get involved: add worms to your pile—kids can’t resist them, and they make explaining the composting process fun.
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Start a worm box; they’re available through most garden centers and worms teach kids about sustainability—as well as being great fun.
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Organize family outings to farmers’ markets and to farms, for apple and strawberry-picking or helping with weeding and harvesting. Introduce your kids to the farmers and to farmers’ kids.
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Joining a CSA—a Community-Supported Agriculture program in which consumers buy shares in a farm’s harvest—make this especially easy to do.
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Whenever possible, bring your kids’ friends, and their parents, along. Peer pressure is so important to kids; getting your child’s class involved will help enormously.
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Get involved in your school’s PTA and advocate nutrition education. Try to get local food brought to the school breakfast or lunch program and start a school garden.
KIDS AND VEGETABLES
We’re not going to say that it’s easy to get kids to eat vegetables, certainly not when their friends are all eating sugar- and fat-filled foods. But here are some ideas for veggies that many kids are happy to try:
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Dips and dunks; it’s more fun to eat a broccoli spear or a carrot stick if you’ve dunked it yourself. Try different vegetables–not every kid will like every one–and try some dips with special kid ingredients, like sweet fruit or peanut butter.
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Make your own pizza: Ask your kids to decorate with vegetables and they’re more likely to find them palatable.
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Most important: do it together. Involve your kids in preparing meals—even a two-year-old can tear up greens—and eating as a family.
www.truecostoffood.org www.sierraclub.org/sustainable_consumption/
To order a video of your own contact us at Truecostoffood@aol.org
History of landscape horticulture
This is an example of how the ancient developed their landscape
Vegetarian Stats
The following quotes, facts, figures, and statistics are excerpted from Please Don’t Eat the Animals (2007) by Jennifer Horsman and Jaime Flowers:
“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.”
—Albert Einstein
“Each year, the meat industrial complex abuses and butchers nearly 9 billion cows, pigs, sheep, turkeys, chickens, and other innocent, feeling animals just for the enjoyment of consumers. Each year, nearly 1.5 million of these consumers are crippled and killed prematurely by heart failure, cancer, stroke, and other chronic diseases that have been linked conclusively with the consumption of these animals. Each year, millions of other animals are abused and sacrificed in a vain search for a ‘magic pill’ that would vanquish these largely self-inflicted diseases.”
—Alex Hershaft, PhD, president, Farm Animal Reform Movement
When analyzing 8,300 deaths in the United States, United Kingdom, and Germany among 76,000 men and women in five different, large studies, researchers concluded that vegetarians have a 24 percent reduction in death from heart disease.
Similarly, in the famous Oxford Vegetarian Study, where 6,000 vegetarians were compared with 5,000 meat-eaters over nearly two decades, scientists found that the rate of death from heart disease was 28 percent lower in vegetarians than in meat-eaters.
One study analyzed eighty scientific studies in leading medical journals. The analysis found that vegetarians had lower blood pressure, and were less likely to suffer from stroke, heart attack, and kidney failure.
A large German study of nearly 2,000 vegetarians found that deaths from heart disease were reduced by over one-third, and that heart disease itself was far less than that of the general population.
Another large study examined the coronary artery disease risk of young adults ages 18 to 30 and vegetarians were found to have much higher levels of cardiovascular fitness and a greatly reduced risk of heart disease.
“The process of gradual blocking of the coronary arteries begins not in adulthood but in childhood…and the main cause of this arteriosclerosis is the steadily increasing amount of fat in the American diet, particularly saturated animal fats such as those found in meat, chicken, milk and cheeses. If there was another disease that caused half a million deaths a year, you can be sure that the public would be acutely aware of the danger, and that the cure or prevention would be universally practiced.”
—Dr. Benjamin Spock, author, child expert
“I don’t understand why asking people to eat a well-balanced vegetarian diet is considered drastic, while it is medically conservative to cut people open and put them on powerful cholesterol-lowering drugs for the rest of their lives.”
—Dr. Dean Ornish, author, Reversing Heart Disease
Stroke is the third leading cause of death behind heart disease and cancer. Vegetarians have a 20 to 30 percent reduced risk of having a stroke. Stroke, like heart disease, is associated with diets high in saturated fats, and the vegetarian diet is naturally low in these fats.
The Oxford Vegetarian Study found cancer mortality to be 39 percent lower among vegetarians when compared with meat-eaters. The European Prospective Investigation of Cancer found vegetarians suffer 40 percent fewer cancers than the general population.
For more info visit
Britain's garden timeline
This timelines is really good, it captures the history of gardening in Britain. I like it because there are few number of sites that I visited, such as Kew Gardens, Eden Project and Chelsea among others.
World Development Report 2010
Development and Climate Change
September 15, 2009—Developing countries can shift to lower-carbon paths while promoting development and reducing poverty, but this depends on financial and technical assistance from high-income countries, says World Development Report 2010: Development and Climate Change.
High-income countries also need to act quickly to reduce their carbon footprints and boost development of alternative energy sources to help tackle climate change. If they act now, a ‘climate-smart’ world is feasible, and the costs for getting there will be high but still manageable. More from the press release…
Act now
Acting now is essential, or else options disappear and costs increase as the world commits itself to high-carbon pathways and largely irreversible warming trajectories. Climate change is already compromising efforts to improve standards of living and to achieve the Millennium Development Goals. Staying close to 2°C above preindustrial levels—likely the best that can be done—requires a veritable energy revolution.
Act Together
Acting together is key to keeping the costs down and effectively tackling both adaptation and mitigation. It has to start with high-income countries taking aggressive action to reduce their own emissions. That would free some “pollution space” for developing countries, but more importantly, it would stimulate innovation and the demand for new technologies so they can be rapidly scaled up.
Act Differently
Acting differently is required to enable a sustainable future in a changing world. In the next few decades, the world’s energy systems must be transformed so that global emissions drop 50 to 80 percent. Infrastructure must be built to withstand new extremes. To feed 3 billion more people without further threatening already stressed ecosystems, agricultural productivity and efficiency of water use must improve.
