Green Living. Green Giving

If we are to believe a fuzzy, green fictitious frog, “It ain’t easy being green.” Kermit the Frog said it years ago, and while his laments might have been directed at wooing the lovely Miss Piggy, the same sentiment goes double for the holidays.

Even now, in today’s eco-conscious environment, the fa-la-la’s heavily outweigh the call for clean living.

Let’s not get daunted, though. With just a little research, I uncovered some great eco-friendly alternatives, running the gamut from party invitations, wrappings and favors, to what to wear to that get-together, to companies that actually give back to the environment.

But first, here’s a thought: According to a Stanford University study, Americans throw away 25% more trash during the Thanksgiving to New Year's holiday period than during any other time of year. The extra waste amounts to 25 million tons of garbage, or about one million extra tons per week. What can be done about it? For starters, examine your gifting style.

Let’s start with the basics: Holiday Cards. One of the big tree killers, right? Yes and no. Fact: U.S. paper consumption is the highest in the world. Fact: In the U.S., more than 90% of the printing and writing paper comes from virgin tree fiber. (According to www.newdream.org.) What can you do? E-cards are appropriate for many occasions, and the holidays are no exception. However, if you’re the nostalgic type and you long for hard-copy cards, fear not. Just because there’s nothing more traditional than sending a holiday card doesn’t mean you need to shirk tradition to be friendly to Ma Earth. Think “tree-free“ correspondence. Crane & Co. makes 100% cotton stationery: instead of cutting down trees, Crane uses discarded garment cuttings that would otherwise be sent to a landfill. In addition, consider writing out holiday greetings on non-holiday paper. From Green Earth Office Supply comes the Natura Banana or Coffee Butterfly Stationary Set. The paper is made in Costa Rica from a combination of unbleached post-consumer paper and a minimum of 5% coffee beans or banana fiber. A percentage of each sale supports sustainable agriculture in the tropical rainforest. Also, the Garlic Notecard Pack is made from, you guessed it: 100% recycled fibers and garlic skins.

When gifting, remember to wrap presents in fabric, not paper, and whenever shipping gifts, use recycled cardboard boxes. Tips from www.ecobags.com include storing ornaments in small fabric sacks as opposed to bins, and decorating your house with neighborhood treasures like pinecones and branches instead of buying trees.

One large focus of the holidays is, of course, eating. When shopping for holiday meal fixings (or any meal fixings), consider a hemp tote. (Hemp: It’s not just for smoking anymore!) Also available on Green Earth Office Supply. Don’t forget going eco-friendly for your holiday feasts. Consider organic, fair trade and cruelty-free products to eat, as well. Since chocolate plays a large role in holiday gift giving and baking, when looking for chocolate, consider Fair Trade Certified products. This means that small-scale cocoa farmers offer those products. This is important because most of our chocolate comes from the Ivory Coast and very little profit goes to the farmers who actually grow the beans. Fair Trade Certified chocolate guarantees fair prices to farmers despite what is happening within the cocoa market and it promotes farming techniques that protect the environment and its farmers. For more information check out www.fairtradecertified.org.

As you may have guessed, there is a plethora of information available online. Some of these Web sites give back to the environment. For example, the online community for everything organic and natural: www.myNaturalLink.com, is an interactive site for healthy living. And for every 200 members who subscribe to the paid portion of the site, the company plants a tree. Another online company, Lululemon Athletica (www.lululemon.com), offers a variety of organic products as holiday gift items and an eco-friendly alternative wrapping for the holidays that reduces waste through one complete piece of packaging, versus the traditional retail packaging for the holidays.

For a truly unique gifting idea, give “GreenDimes” a whirl. GreenDimes is a service that reduces consumer junk mail by up to 90%, plus the company plants 10 trees for each member. Since its inception in September 2006, GreenDimes has saved hundreds of thousands of trees and millions of gallons of water that would have been used to produce junk mail. For the holidays, GreenDimes is offering “Gift Me” gift certificates in denominations of $36, $20, $15 or $5, which can be used to purchase anything in the GreenDimes online store including the $15 Junk Mail Reduction Kit (that includes 10 trees being planted for the recipient) or the $36 GreenDimes Pack (“Green Me”) that includes the junk mail reduction kit, the “Address the Mess” reusable tote bag, a GreenDimes T-shirt (your choice of color and size) and two energy-saving compact fluorescent light bulbs. Also available are T-shirts and reusable tote bags.

Ever consider giving a gift that is not material? How about one that helps save endangered animals? Defenders of Wildlife and the World Wildlife Federation are two organizations that offer opportunities to give back by protecting endangered species, preserving endangered places and fighting global threats like overfishing, deforestation and global warming. Through WWF’s symbolic animal adoption program, you can adopt any of 80 different animals. With the adoption, your recipient will receive an adoption certificate for their adopted animal, a color photo and a fact card with details about the species and its habitat. Adoption levels range in price from $25 to $250, and with an adoption of $50 or more, your recipient also gets a plush animal, and online adoptions come with an electronic personalized adoption certificate, screen savers, desktop wall paper and AIM icons all customized to your animal. Sites are www.defenders.org and www.worldwildlife.org/gifts. For a more extravagant gift, the WWF’s Extraordinary Gifts program offers one-of-a-kind opportunities to support specific conservation projects in regions around the world. These gifts are for the big spender as they range from $1,000 to $2.5 million. Options include relocating bison or rhinos to a wildlife protected area and finding new habitats for polar bears in the Arctic.

Want to give an educational gift that keeps on giving? Try sending loved ones or co-workers books about how to help the environment. A few good ones include the witty The Casual Conservationist by Eric Mongo Robbins and The Virtuous Consumer: Your Essential Shopping Guide for a Better, Kinder, Healthier World, by Leslie Garrett, which is endorsed by the Sierra Club’s Global Warming Program.Believe it or not, going au natural has even found its way into the very antithesis of practical living: the fashion world. So, this holiday season you can dress to impress family, friends, co-workers and Mother Earth. For casual affairs, try jeans and a sparkly top.

According to a United Nations report, it takes two-thirds of a pound of pesticides to produce enough cotton to make a single pair of jeans. Ouch! For more environmentally-friendly booty-hugging contours, check out H&M. H&M is carrying an entire line of organic cotton this season. Also consider recycling your old jeans. Visit denimdoctor.com to learn how your old denim jeans can be dyed and recycled. For eco-friendly jeans, check out U Jeans at www.ujeans.com. UJeans are environmentally and socially responsible because they are colored with natural enzymes and minerals rather than chemicals. And the raw material used in the denim is sourced from sustainable-growth cotton. Even the retail package and shipping envelope are reusable. The Jeans Denim Pack is what UJeans uses as a gift certificate, and it’s what retailers sell for customers to design and order their UJeans. Then the jeans are shipped to customers in an envelope made from reclaimed denim.