The Issue: Every year million of green christmas tree are cut, transported, sold, and after christmas is over thrown to street corner. The current practice costs to the consumer’s pocket, destroys greenery, and ends into disposal problem.

Solution: Buy or grow a Christmas tree in a pot, bring the potted tree inside home, decorate, and after Christmas is over, remove the decoration, transfer the potted tree out to landscaping, or keep in, as the situation permits, to reuse the tree year after year. Year round, or before you bring the tree in, trim the tree to your needs.

Benefits:
1. To individual, it will save cost and hassle of buying, carrying, and installing a green Christmas tree each year. You do not have to dispose the tree, rather just transfer out side the house to add to the landscape or keep it in as indoor house plant. You will have affection to your Christmas tree year round.
2. To the environment, millions of trees (greenery) saved, esthetic (used trees on the street curb), and cost of disposal saved or eliminated. Nationwide, savings of several Billion Dollars each year.

Drawback:
1. Business of growing and selling Christmas tree is hurt.
2. The potted tree would be heavier than a branch/green tree to carry in and out of the house.

Play outside a lot,
Do not give material gift but offer a service, a supper, an activity to someone.
If you want to give a material present, give a second hand toy or object.
Use newspaper to wrap gifts or reeuse old paper.
Make your own cards.
Talk with your family about reducing our footprint on Mother EArth.
Be thankful to her.

Happy holiday.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU TOO!!!

“real world”, you really think if the U.S. wanted to be greener it couldn’t? Maybe we could, but we have a constitution that restricts certain abridgments of rights in the process. Unfortunately this agency has abandoned the constitution in the course of becoming more “green”.

Last year, I noticed that my friends had stopped wrapping packages in paper and gave gifts in lovely boxes with beautiful ribbons, both of which could be reused. None of the magic of gift-giving was lost, and there was no paper to dispose of later.

I have always used last year’s holiday cards as name tags on this year’s presents, and save bows and boxes. I also shred giftwrap to use as stuffing for gift bags or mailing boxes in lieu of tissue or bubblewrap.

I am not the first to have said it, but there are actually four “R’s” to being Green: Reduce, Reuse, Repair, THEN Recycle.

For the holidays, I am not asking for anything new, but to have things that I already own fixed before I replace them. All I want for Christmas is the name of a good, old-fashoined, all-purpose repairman.

The machines we use in everyday life are simple and easy to fix. Why people throw away their repairable ones and buy new ones every couple of years is a mystery to me. So far this year I have personally repaired my sink disposer, washer & dryer (both 15 years old), one attic fan motor, and my lawn mower a few times. I am not replacing any of the items that are still broken until I have tried harder, and a professional tells me they are past repair.

Somewhere along the way, Americans decided to trade in everything they own every two years, as if all their possessions were a leased car. Somehow, we have to get back to buying quality merchandise that lasts, rather than disposable, plastic suff that breaks – and we have got to obtain a basic knowledge of when something is broken and when it is fixable.

I’m not a mechanic or an electrician – I’m a housewife with a few biological science degrees. I can’t fix everything, and I know my limitations (don’t mess with 220 volts). But I would bet that most Americans could fix the majority of problems in their households on their own, with a minimum of effort and expense, if they took the time to try. It would keep tons of scrap out of our landfills and save billions in repair and replccement costs.

For us the green holidays means saving what ever we can this holidays.
A – For our school teacher we did not wrap the gifts in wrapping paper. We put the gifts in bags and made sure we do not write the names on the bags so that the teacher sould “REUSE” them.

B – We also bought greeting cards made up of recycled paper as well as printed by vegetable based inks. This is the drive we are focusing on right now.

We also wrote on each card asking teacher to “Re-use whatever you can”.

This way we are trying to do our little bits to save our environment.