Virescent

It’s about that time to start wondering about the holidays- at the very least, to wonder about how to unplug those ridiculous store speakers blasting holiday music. But that’s a start, and while you’re plotting vengeance on jingle bells and window displays, save some brain space for considering how to make your holidays happier and more sustainable. No, seriously- sustainability may be the last thing on your mind in the rush of parties, last minute gifts, travel, cooking, decorating, family, and whatever else one lists in lists of potential holiday hassles, but it’ll save you money and stress.

So, Brilliant Holiday Advice (BHA) part 1: The Gift Guide.

First Rule: Before you buy someone something, figure out if they’ll actually use it. If it’s a purely decorative thing (say a bauble or perhaps a knickknack), is it “their style”? If you have no idea, don’t waste money (see gift ideas below).

Second Rule: Shopping involves ethical decisions, and those decisions don’t go away just because there’s a lot of stuff to buy. Buying fair-trade and responsible items or organic foods or sweatshop-free or recyclable and recycled things matters, and especially now, there are a lot more opportunities to shop ethically this year with a little research (good thing you’re starting early!).

Third Rule: People appreciate the thought most. If they don’t, kick them. Instead of mailing random stuff to people to indicate that you remember them, send them a handwritten note- they care more about hearing from you than odd boxes. If you have skills, make something for them. Give a huge favor- Grandmas love lawn care.

Fourth Rule: If you’re close to the giftee, talk to them about what they want: a surprise, a new microwave, jewelry, slippers, nothing. This works best with close friends and family and will save you the worry of meeting expectations, self-doubt, second guessing, and set appropriate gift levels.

And now, good gift ideas. These aren’t the only good ones by far, so if you think of more, let me know (I have a list to make…)

1. Gift Cards: Impersonal? Only if you do it wrong. Indicative of a lack of caring or thought? Not at all! Sometimes the most loving impulse is acknowledging that you have no idea, based on long distances or generational divides, what people need or want for Christmas/Eid/Hanukkah/Kwanzaa/Festivus (are there Diwali gifts?). Keep in touch better next year, but don’t saddle them with random things they don’t want or already have so you feel more connected and personal. Gift cards to stores you think they will like, or to places you know they do like, with a long, personal handwritten card- everybody appreciates that. Plus, they’re small enough to mail in a regular envelope: smaller shipping cost, both in fuel and money.

2. Take a stroll through local Goodwill, Salvation Army, and thrift stores. These places sell lots of random things and their selection changes all the time. On a good day, you will find glassware, jewelry, pottery, records, books- anything, really- just right for that blank spot on the list, maybe with a little cleaning up first. Bonus small price tag, and instant thoughtful gift!

3. Reusable grocery bags: Try this on someone who’s more likely to actually want to use them- hard to make it a loving gift when you have to explain what they are and give a lecture on the ecological reasons for using them. Any bags will do, but preferably they’ll be at least as large as the plastic grocery bags, not too large to carry when loaded, strong enough for a gallon of milk, and contain separate sections for breakable items like eggs. Personalize old tote bags you have lying around. Crochet your collected grocery bags into a few new ones. Sew some bags for them on your own. Find interesting bags around: everybody sells bags. Local libraries, restaurants, operas- get bags from places they like.

4. Planet Earth series: If you think nature documentaries are lame, admit new evidence. The Planet Earth series has astounding footage of the earth earthing and animals doing animally things they’ve never been seen doing before, thanks to new camera technology and infinite patience. It’s least expensive at Amazon and Costco, and perfect for families, people who like the outdoors, people who hate the outdoors (bring it inside for them!), and, you know, everybody. Not exactly a sustainable tip, but it is awesome, and it involves the promise of technology and respecting the earth because it is pretty and can also eat you, so.

5. Jewelry: Fair Trade or responsibly made, for sure. greenKarat makes jewelry from recycled gold and gems, or find vintage items at thrift stores or consignment shops. Somehow, recycled and lab-grown diamonds say “I love you” much better than the ones currently financing wars and causing ecological and human damage- different post, though. Fair trade jewelry may also be made from recycled items, and Ten Thousand Villages carries a really interesting selection of it- styles range from modern to exciting. Some of their stores are in Old Town Alexandria, Richmond, Baltimore, Bethesda, and Rockville, though there are more in the area. Their wares are all fairly traded, and they also carry lots of other likely gift items and decorations.

6. Solar chargers: For the gadget types, I mentioned a few solar powered chargers for phones and music players in my post on the Solar Decathalon. They’re useful, sustainable, and something nobody else has yet! Perfect gadget for anyone who sees sunlight ever.

That word starts to look weird when it’s typed over and over, but it’s somehow not as weird as basing a global economy on a non-renewable, limited resource. To have been at those meetings! “We don’t know how much we’ve got or where it is, but instead of seriously considering other options, let’s just go ahead and rely almost solely on this as our source of energy for everybody! Mua ha ha ha ha!”

I’m sure you’ve heard the economic hand-wringing (not the Invisible Hand though, he’s been busy) over high oil prices recently. $100 oil! Oh Noes! We did or did not see this coming! It will now go up or maybe down! Curious about why the price is so far up? Blame speculators, the Middle East, weather in oil fields, weather in shipping lanes, lack of refinery production, OPEC’s stonewalling, international tensions, international distribution of production and refining capacity, increase in demand, underproduction, overproduction- blame whatever you want, chances are it’s been blamed for a change in oil prices before. An article in the NYT characterizes this new “energy crisis” as fundamentally different from the ones in the 1970s, since it’s mostly driven by an increase in demand, and not a sudden decrease in supply. It certainly is making things interesting internationally- The IHT summarizes some exciting developments stemming from oil prices: Russia, Angola, and Hugo Chavez win, and China and India lose. US dependency on imported oil is tactfully not mentioned.

If oil prices keep going up, it’s going to hit importing nations, developing nations and consumers who enjoy having heat in winter and enough gas to get to work hard. The International Energy Agency (summarized at Wired) reports that demand for energy is rising and is only going to rise further, given the economic growth of gigantor countries like China and India. This will be a wonderful test of the free market: for economic, social, political, security, environmental, and plain common sense reasons, we absolutely cannot rely on everybody’s favorite limited resource for energy anymore. Will business deliver us from oil with advancements in clean energy technology, or will we face disastrous economic setbacks for the least cushioned people and international turmOil?

Small steps signal salvation- Arab Gulf businessmen are pouring oil money into clean technology. But until companies see imminent collapse, corporations become visionaries, or some prescient governing body (oxymoron?) steps in, consumers will be forced to care about the price of oil.

NBC is going green this week by changing their normal website colors, giving you helpful tips (take shorter showers! buy organic food!), and featuring an ad for a (wince) hybrid SUV (look, I know they’re better than non-hybrid SUVs, and they’re safe and roomy and such, but still, I wince). The shows are environmentally friendly in theme: some guy on some show buys a solar farm! Some attractive violent woman goes to an “Awareness Gala”! This all sounds very thrilling, I’m sure. I don’t know anything about the rest of the line-up, but tomorrow night the two shows I do watch are on- The Office (Michael gets back to nature/runs off into the woods, hilarity ensues), and 30 Rock.  Al Gore will be on the latter show this week, along with that paleontologist from Friends and another lady who, according to Wikipedia, is from the Today Show.  I saw a preview for the episode with Gore in it, and I’m actually excited about it.  Not just because this is “my kind of thing”, but also because Gore should make fun of himself more often.  You’ll probably appreciate his performance even if you don’t like him: “A whale is in danger! I have to go.”

30 Rock is on Thursday at 8:30ET, followed by The Office.  If you miss them due to having a life, you can watch both episodes anytime you like at their websites- they get posted on Friday morning.

I hope that the success of my Halloween party will be measured by the heft of the recycling bin afterwards. It was both more and less difficult than I expected to make the shindig ecofriendly. Fortunately it was a simple affair- a few snacks, drinks, and a nod at the reason for the season (refined sugar and the color orange). First, the decoration: I used some heftier paper streamers that made it through last year’s party and a string of paper pumpkins from a late seasonal gift that also escaped said melee. Inexplicably, these were in a box under my bed, along with the leftover orange plastic ware and napkins and a few red ribbons- it looks like Christmas will benefit from my packing tendencies, also. I found a few other decorations on clearance, but I didn’t purchase anything that wasn’t useful in itself and that I didn’t like enough to use regularly. Orange and black aren’t my color scheme of choice, but I found non-garish dark orange placemats and a few sparkly black bowls whose Halloweenic nature will be completely hidden when dispersed among the contents of my apartment. None of the snacks required silverware, and only a few napkins were needed in anticipation of party fouls. All the decorations were packed up afterwards for next year.

Comestibles were almost as simple to green. I stuck with mostly canned beer, since aluminum cans tend to contain a good amount of recycled material and can be fully recycled themselves. The available glass bottles had their caps collected for my jewelry-inclined friend to experiment with as threatened. Solo cups remaining from the last party (and cleaned!) were put out for the other available liquids. Soft drinks were purchased in 2L quantities, since those are shared and come with less packaging than canned sodas, though their tops are not recyclable. In the aftermath, the surviving cups were collected and washed for the next bash. Grist has advice on whether to go reusable and wash after parties, or use paper products and dump, and this was the toughest decision due to the complex calculations of life cycle analysis and comparison of different resources depleted. We’re not in a drought, so I used a little bit of water washing the cups by hand. There are biodegradable partyware lines, but “not having to buy new stuff” trumped exploring for those items. I didn’t serve food, just organic chips, organic salsa, and candy, and picked candy for it’s addition to the color scheme and lack of bulky, redundant packaging (MnMs, candy corn). In the latter, I was partially thwarted by my thoughtful and well-meaning gentleman friend, who showed up with a bag of doubly-wrapped candies for me. No worries, though, those are best for party favors. Stuffing handfuls of MnMs in your guests’ pockets as they leave is not quite the same as a contained box of Nerds, despite being much more entertaining (for you).

The final touch was the aggressive recycling box, which, after it has been emptied, will be available for me to bring to any parties that I may, in the future, be invited to. All in all, we ended up only tossing out the sales tags on the bowls and place mats, a few napkins and paper towels used for spills, packaging for some of the candy and chips, and a tangle of toilet paper turned upon an uncostumed guest- I run a strict costume party, and he knew the chance he took.

As a reminder that we’re not doomed yet, here are a couple of articles on large investments in research and development in clean technology. Both are from Wired.

First, especially to please the conservative/free market types, Formula One car racing is requiring its teams to make their cars more energy efficient and look for alternative sources of power, by banning engine development for the 2008-2018 seasons. Hybrid technologies, alternative fuels, and recapture of heat and exhaust to be converted to power are some of the systems to be developed to make the race cars racier in the future. Formula One is to the world like NASCAR is to Middle America, it would seem, and they’re sponsored by some major car companies to demonstrate cutting-edge technology, which then quickly trickles down into the everyday-driver market. This could have a pretty fantastic impact on the efficiency of cars available to the public, and it’s a great demonstration that efficient cars aren’t lame, for those more interested in smoking other cars at stoplights than conservation.

For those interested in the viability of government investment in research and development of new technology, Russia’s $5 billion investment in a state nanotechnology center is worth watching. Nanotech is good for lots of things (everything, according to those involved in nanotech research), but the director of the facility Mikhail Kovalchuk is mostly interested in the applications of his research on efficiency and clean energy technologies. Even more exciting, since Russia’s budget surplus that allows them to make this investment is mostly due to their incredible gains in the oil and natural gas markets (holding Eastern Europe over the barrel, har). The article points out that this investment is at least in part meant to stave off the effects of the certain collapse of the fossil fuel economy on Russia’s economy.