Green Cotton

Wondering what to give someone for the holidays? Tired of all the stuff piling up with no more space to put it? Down in the dumps over the economy without much extra cash to spend on gifts?

Well, Brighter Planet has just the solution for you: Give the gift of carbon neutrality for ONE DAY to someone you care about by offsetting all the carbon he or she would typically emit. Brighter Planet has calculated that the average American emits 136 pounds of carbon dioxide each day. Where does this come from?

• About 36 pounds come from driving, flying, and other travel.
• Another 22 pounds come from heating, cooling, and powering our homes.
• The final 78 pounds come from producing, transporting, and disposing of all the stuff we buy, and from shared services like schools and street lights.
• 136 pounds would fill 5,000 balloons — imagine releasing that every day!

For every participant, Brighter Planet will donate 136 pounds of offsets — the equivalent of one day’s worth of CO2 emissions (based on the estimated average American footprint of 24.78 tons).

Help Brighter Planet reach their goal by giving away 5,000 One Day gifts and offset 680,000 pounds of CO2. We’re close, but could use your continued support to get there. Click here to send a gift: http://oneday.brighterplanet.com/users/3844/passes/public/94J-U6Y.

To learn more about Brighter Planet and their carbon offsets, visit here.

A new site has started, Worldchristmastree.com to promote and share Christmas trees worldwide (indoors and out) while pledging to save the forests by donating 80% of all proceeds to the World Land Trust.

The World Land Trust is an international conservation charity (Reg. No. 1001291), based in Halesworth, UK. Founded in 1989 as the World Land Trust (formerly World Wide Land Conservation Trust) has been working to preserve the world’s most biologically important and threatened lands, and has helped purchase and protect over 375,000 acres of habitats rich in wildlife, in Asia, Central and South America and the UK.

Click on their interactive google map and see the largest Christmas Tree in Europe (also featured top) to small tropical trees decorated in Vietnam. Upload your own tree and be a part of the movement to re-invest in preserving forests worldwide.

For what typically is not a very “green” holiday, here is a very easy way to contribute to something worthwhile by simply uploading an image of your tree online. The other neat aspect of this site is that promotes cross-cultural sharing of one communal aspect of the coming holiday season: the Christmas Tree.

Chances are you are going to celebrate the holiday this year in one green way or another and that’s great. Reduce, reuse and recycle. Tell us what you are doing.

Just giving thanks for what we have  – the people in our lives, the roofs over our heads, our health, our well-being, our communities, our food, and whatever else it is in your life that you are thankful for, is where it is at.

In fact, Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays from the green perspective. We are asked to stop and think about what we are thankful for, and whether or not nature is on your list, it seems that no matter what way we spin it, Mother Nature is at the heart of it. All the things we can and should be thankful for somehow boil down to Mother Nature– our natural resources including our land, water, air, mountains, desserts etc. In fact, where would we be without these critical elements? The very act of appreciating Mother Nature and all her derivatives by definition provokes environmentalism, and an urge for conservation, so that is why I like this holiday.

Perhaps more so that ever before (given our economic climate), we are more prone to pause, reflect and appreciate that which we have. As such, we are prompted to also think about ways in which we can conserve, reuse and recycle. This is good news, and even better that we are doing it en masse, moving toward greater sustainability and a more long lasting future.

I therefore would like to give thanks right here and right now– for Mother Earth, all our natural resources which we currently have: our waters, lands, mountains, air (those of which are still uncontaminated), our people, animals, communities and hope that we can together, do what it takes to preserve a natural and safe environment for our grandchildren to live.

In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.

- Baba Dioum, Senegalese conservationist