Cramped parking lots, long line-ups, and short tempers… all words my fiancé would use to describe Christmas shopping. In his defense, Christmas shopping can be very stressful but not if you plan ahead.
Have you ever gone out Christmas shopping with a list of people in your head for whom you need to buy Christmas presents? Me too. And I always ended up over spending and forgetting people.
You can make Christmas shopping a little less stressful and A LOT more budget friendly by following a game plan. Start with listing out everyone you are buying Christmas presents for. Then I usually start a couple weeks before I go out shopping, researching online and getting ideas for presents. This way, I am able to plan a budget for each person. You need to commit to your budget, it is really easy to say, “I think I will get that instead, it is only $10 more”. $10 per person can really add up.
It doesn’t end there. Before I go out shopping, I make a plan of action. What stores I am planning to go to and what I am getting at each store.
It all sounds like a lot of work, but honestly it makes things so much easier. Mike and I went out this afternoon and as he says, “It was relatively painless.” We were able to get presents for more than ten people on our list in just a couple hours.
Taking some time to make a plan doesn’t sound so bad now, eh?!
9 DAYS LEFT
When you are out and about this Holiday season, just take a minute to remember what Christmas is all about. It isn’t about getting the latest and greatest presents, but it is about enjoying some time with your family and friends and helping those less fortunate.
The shopping malls are filled with people trying to get the latest and greatest toys for their friends and family. Once purchased, those gifts are wrapped into beautiful packages and placed under the Christmas tree.
There is only one problem... most wrapping paper purchased in stores is not recyclable. So all of that beautiful wrapping paper ends up being thrown into a landfill and takes years to decompose.
This year, I set out on having one my greenest Christmases and at a lower cost than traditional wrapping to boot.
What you need:
·Christmas Ornaments – 5 for $1.25 from the Dollarstore
·Packing paper – 40’ roll for $3.99 from most business supply stores or I recently found 25’ rolls at the dollarstore for $1.25 each
·Brown paper gift bags – 2 for $1.25 from the Dollarstore
·Ribbon or twine – various prices (I have a bunch left over from last year)
·Christmas themed stamp – I ordered a Christmas tree one online, I am just waiting for it to come in
·Oh and don’t forget the hot chocolate and cookies!
Step 1 – Wrap the present with packing paper
Step 2 – Add ribbon to the package
Step 3 – Tie the Christmas Ornament to the ribbon to add a special touch and some sparkle
Step 4 – Stamp the paper with your Christmas stamp once or multiple times. I will be using the stamp as a gift tag to write who the present is to and from. Not to say that most of my family and friends will know a present wrapped in recyclable paper is from me!
It’s as easy as that. Now you have beautiful Christmas presents under the tree for a fantastic green Christmas (but I am still wishing for snow). Plus by adding the tree ornaments to the wrapping, your friends and family are getting something special to add to their trees as well.
Next, you have to break the habit of pulling out the garbage bag on Christmas morning and throwing everything in sight inside. When growing up, I can remember sitting in a sea of torn wrapping paper and the adults in the room coming with garbage bags to clean everything up in one swoop!
Break the cycle and pick up the recycling bins this year.
I hope that answers your question Paul! Happy Holidays everyone. Remember Christmas isn’t just about the stress of the shopping malls and spending money, but about taking the time to enjoy the company of your friends and family and to be thankful of the blessings you have in your life.
Keurig, Tossimo, Mr. Coffee, Nespresso, Tim Horton’s, Starbucks, etc.
… How ever you get your morning coffee, have you thought about how it affects the environment? We just added a Keurig to our home and before I knew it I realized I have no idea what to do with the K-cups.
So with a little research, I came to this:
Type
Recyclable?
# of years to biodegrade in a landfill
Tim Horton’s / Starbucks Paper Cups
Plastic lid is recyclable in your blue bin.
Paper cup can be disposed of in your green bin / compost.
Plastic lid- 15 years + decades longer
Paper cup – 15 years
K-Cups (Keurig / Mr. Coffee/Nespresso)
There are three layers to every K-cup.
The foil lid can be pulled off and recycled.
The coffee grinds inside can be disposed of in your green bin / compost.
The filter inside the cup is made of paper and can be recycled with paper products being sure to remove as many food particles as possible.
The outer plastic shell is not recyclable.
Full cup – hundreds of years
T-discs (Tassimo)
Similar K-cups, T-discs have three layers.
The foil lid can be pulled off and recycled, but you need cut out the barcode in order to recycle it.
The filter inside the cup is made of paper and can be recycled with paper products being sure to remove as many food particles as possible.
The outer plastic shell is recyclable where recycling programs exist.
Full cup – hundreds of years
Home Coffee Percolator
Coffee grinds and filter are 100% biodegradable in your green bin / compost
Filter and coffee grinds – 1 year or less
Note – the coffee filters (white ones) have some bleach in them, but with all my research the amount is minimal and can be decomposed without worrying about adding chemicals to the compost.
(Note – the above information is dependent on brand and could differ accordingly)
In the end, the tried and true home coffee percolaters are the most environmentally friendly. So why have so many switched to this new one use system that puts billions of plastic cups into landfills every year? Convenience… isn’t that the answer all the time these days?
I won’t continue on a tree-hugging rant because frankly no one wants to hear it and… we bought a Keurig last week! So what are our other options if we have these brewers at home:
This seems like the best of both worlds, saves on money and there is virtually no waste. Only problem, Mike and I don’t drink coffee. So it isn’t our best option for the coffee alternative K-cups, however I will keep researching. In the meantime, my work has a program where they collect all the used K-cups and return them to the manufacturer for proper recycling and disposal.
As for the Tassimo, their brand includes the slogan “The barcode brews it better”. Because of this, they have not come up with an alternative reusable pod (that I can see). That being said, their pods are recyclable as noted above, so it is slightly more environmentally friendly to start than most K-cups.
As for your morning Tim Horton’s or Starbucks coffee, think twice before tossing them in the trash. Every year, 58 billion paper cups are thrown into landfills. In order to make those cups, 20 million trees are cut down and 12 billion gallons of water are used. (stats taken from - http://www.thebetacup.com/about/).
So if that morning cup of joe is what you need, just take a second to think of your impact on the environment with each sip. Maybe instead of 58 billion paper cups among the billions of K-cups and T-discs, you can reduce it by just one… in the hopes of that number getting smaller and smaller with each cup.
I was watching Dragon’s Den the other night and came across a great young couple that are doing their part to keep our environmental karma in check. Brad and Rebecca took over their family farm in Manning, Alberta to create forests that would never be cut down. Their goal – to sustain their family farm, create habitat and address climate change.
This goes back a little bit to my Wild Weather post, referring what impact we have on the environment in our daily activities. The average person has an ecological footprint of about 5 tonnes per year, in Brad and Rebecca’s farm, that’s 20 trees. The Carbon Farmer Inc. is a company Brad and Rebecca have created so that individuals, groups, companies and the like can pay to have trees planted and never cut down. You can start to restore habitat in Canada for just $1.99.
For less than your morning coffee, Brad and Rebecca will plant a tree and take care of it in your name.
With all of my research into the idea of Carbon Farming, I decided to take my environmental impact into my own hands. We just purchased 5 trees in Brad and Rebecca’s forest; 2 Lodgepole Pine trees and 3 Trembling Aspen trees.
Right after you purchase your trees, you are emailed your specific planting code that allows you to add an optional message that will be displayed when you explore the forest.
Sorry everyone, I know I have been a little less than consistent with my blog posts the last couple weeks. After five months writing this blog, I am running out of things I think will interest you.
So as I keep posting week after week, I ask that if there are any questions you have or topics I haven’t touched on that you would like to read about, just let me know.
I am open to any of your ‘shades of green’ questions.
After spending 4 hours on Saturday raking and bagging up leaves, I thought to myself why am I doing this? The only answer I could logically come up with is, “well everyone else does”. To me it is about the keeping up with the Jones’ syndrome! You know, when you do things only because all your neighbours do and you don’t want to feel like they are judging your lawn every time they walk by.
So I have done some research to see what other alternatives we have to raking and bagging leaves:
1.No rake, no bags. Leaving leaves on your lawn and mulching them with the lawn mower is a good way to insulate the grass over the winter. However, the leaves need to be in moderation. If there is too thick of a bed of leaves on the lawn, there is a risk of suffocating the lawn and creating disease. Once the leaves are all dry and crunchy, take the lawn mower over the lawn to mulch up the leaves. In the spring you are left with a healthier lawn and soil and very few leaf remnants on the lawn.
2.Compost the leaves. Dedicate an area in your backyard for the compost, pile up the leaves and let them go to work. You do however need to make sure you turn the pile to ensure the correct amount of moisture.
3.Planter beds. Mulch leaves and use them to build planter beds. This would be the most natural mulch, with no added chemicals and colouring.
And there are many other alternatives out there, just make sure one of your alternatives isn’t raking on a windy day.. not fun!
I wish I would have thought of all of this before Mike and I spent our afternoon filling 25 bags of leaves for compost by the City. So for now, we will continue to ‘keep up with the Jones’.
HiEveryone. Sorry for the late post, it was a rough week last week and I am still a little devastated. Okay that might be a little bit of an exaggeration but it definitely wasn’t a fun couple of days last week.
I am sure you guys have all heard about ravaging effects of Hurricane Sandy on North America. Here in Niagara we did not get anything close to the devastating conditions that New York was hit with, but we got A LOT of rain and very strong winds for a good four days straight.
If you haven’t heard, here is an idea of what effects Hurricane Sandy had on New York:
(Picture taken from news.nationalgeographic.com)
So how did this affect me? Well we got water in our basement (…again) and what looked like a free swimming pool in the backyard. It was more of an inconvenience than anything. My prayers go out to the people of New York City and the surrounding states that lost their homes or worse their lives because of this super storm.
All of this crazy weather got me thinking. When was the last time a hurricane of this magnitude hit North America that far north? From my Wikipedia reference, the most recent deadly hurricane to hit the New York City area was 1938. 74 years later, 55 people died.
I find weather very interesting and completely believe in the ‘greenhouse effect’ or what is commonly called global warming. The United States alone emits 20% of the world’s greenhouse gases. Actions in our daily lives are effecting our environment in ways that most people wouldn’t even begin to imagine.
·Driving your car. Driving automobiles is one of the biggest factors human population is having on the environment and the use of fossil fuels.
·Using electricity. This includes everything from using your toaster in the morning, using your computer all day at work, to using the stove to make dinner.
To put it into perspective a bit, burning fossil fuels is not bad only because it is negatively effecting our environment through the emission of greenhouse gases, but fossil fuels are a limited resource. In North America, we are importing up to 94% of our fossil fuels. There is a risk that the world’s supply of fossil fuels will not be enough to sustain our use.
Rather than waiting for industry to catch up technology wise, we need to take steps now to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. So what can we do?
·Turn off your computer monitors when not using them. A lot of people think to turn off their computers at the end of the day but how often do you think to turn off the monitor as well.
·Ride a bike. If you are just running to the Tim Horton’s on the corner or to the corner store, why not get out your bike or take a walk. And while I realize that isn’t a realistic alternative for most people, if you take a second to think about what the emissions from your vehicle are doing to the environment, you might consider it.
·Car pool. Car pool where it is an option. Do you live in the same city as a co-worker, could you drive to work together and alternate weeks/days?
·Take the bus. Public transit has developed in most cities and it is easier than ever to use.
·Do you go to the gym after work? If possible, get a gym membership for a gym near your work so you don’t have to drive there.
·Ladies, leave the straigtener off until you need it. We all know the straightener takes less than a minute to heat up, so why do we often turn it on 5-10 minutes before we need it so it is ready to go?
·Unplug appliances when you are not using them. Even when off and plugged in, an appliance will still be drawing on electricity.
There are many different things you can do to be more conscious of your use of fossil fuels, so just take a second to consider other alternatives available.
