Every Christmas, I try to creatively mask my lack of creativity with presents for my friends. One year in high school, I made these snowman ornaments out of off-white felt that I had learned how to do in fifth grade. A few years later, I made my Naps Shirts and gave them to my friends. Two years ago, I gave my friends each a copy of Getting Things Done by David Allen as an attempt to convert them, but I’m sure none of them have read a word in the book, let alone a sentence.
As I, along with the rest of the world, become more environmentally aware, I’m starting to feel overwhelmed by the volume of “stuff” that we make, buy, and dispose of every year, especially during the holiday season.
In my daily life, I try to be conscious of my purchases and look for more sustainable options before considering more popular or more “bang for the buck” ones.
For example, with every piece electronic or appliance I’m in the market for, energy efficiency is always in my top three criteria for the purchase, next to price and performance. (At this point in the environmentalist movement, there are times when the most energy efficient product still isn’t worth its price or limited functions.)
Also, recently, I bought a staple-less stapler online, and while the technology is still in its early days and can be improved upon, I’m saving money and resources on staples. These choices may seem to have miniscule effects, but if everyone does this, we’ll save a lot of staples, and that can change a lot.
Nonetheless, buying “stuff” still contributes to people’s drive for new things and rejection for the old. What I’ve realized that works for me is to do as many things virtually as possible, and have your expenses be a service and not a physical object.
That is why this year, and probably from here on, I had decided to donate in my friends’ honor to organizations that they each care about, sort of killing three birds with one stone: 1) having presents for my friends, 2) helping worthy causes, and 3) not contribute to the demand of generating more “stuff” that will eventually get disposed of.
What I noticed after the donations, to my surprise, was that I’ve actually killed a fourth bird with that stone (I’ll stop with the bird-killing analogy, I promise). Since this was my first year donating to organizations, I didn’t even think of the fact that some of the donations are tax-deductible! I don’t mean to cheapen the act, but there is now even more of a reason to donate!
So if you’re doing some last-minute Christmas shopping for your friends, perhaps try asking them what organizations they care about instead.
Flush.
This entry was posted on Thursday, December 24th, 2009 at 11:27 and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.