Environment Victoria’s Festive Season Guide >>

Environment Victoria’s

Festive Season Guide

Reclaiming the fun and happiness of the festive season

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Gifts [The term gift can refer to anything that makes the other person happier or less sad, especially when given as a favour, including forgiveness and kindness.]

Problem: Australia’s post-war economic growth has enabled a massive increase in consumer spending. This is never more obvious than during the festive season, when so many of us spend madly on our festivities. (Australians spent well over $20 billion on Christmas in 2006). We here at Environment Victoria love to give and receive gifts, and feast with family and friends. But we also need to face up to the environmental consequences of this and find a solution that works. We believe that the solution for a sustainable celebration involves finding not only practical alternatives, but re-shaping the way we think about our festivities. After all, why should the experience of gift-giving involve rushed, compulsive over-spending in an all-night shopping centre? There’s plenty of space for gift-giving to be something more. Gifts that require your time, energy and creativity are more thoughtful and meaningful. Or if time is of the essence, you can give gifts that directly contribute to a positive environmental and social outcome, such as ethical or virtual gifts.

We buy a huge amount of stuff in the festive season, and lots of it is stuff that isn’t wanted, (like that pink, plastic jewellery your grandma gave you with the best of intentions). We also make huge amounts of food, more than we can eat, and lots of it ends up in the bin. Sometimes it feels like the festive season is just consume, consume, consume. But it doesn’t have to be. Because the good bits of the season aren’t the overconsumption, over spending and stress of excess, they’re enjoying yourself with family, friends and colleagues. This guide will help you hold onto the good bits, while being a little gentler on the planet. It’s about still having a great time, with plenty of food and presents, but without all the waste. When you remember what your priorities are, it’s actually surprisingly easy...

Introduction

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Solution: Ethical Consumption A large part of making your festive season sustainable is to buy ethically. The challenge for all of us when planning our gifts is to consider the impact they have on the Earth. Ethical consumption doesn’t need a long meditation prior to your shopping trip; it just means taking the time to answer questions like these: 1. Is the gift actually something that the person needs or will use? 2. Where is the gift produced and can I buy the same gift locally? 3. What do I think is the overall environmental impact of buying this gift? For example, is it energy efficient, is it recyclable? Will it require lots of disposable batteries? 4. Is the gift long-lasting or easy to upgrade or repair? Disposability is always unsustainable.

What do you give someone who has everything? How about a greener future? Make a gift donation to Environment Victoria on behalf of your loved one, and help us safeguard our environment for all. Go to: www.environmentvictoria.org.au/give, click on ‘Give a Gift Donation’ and fill in all your details. You’ll receive an email to forward onto your loved one letting them know that you care about the planet they live in. Now that’s a gift that means the world.

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Tips for giving ethical gifts

• Act globally and shop locally — shop at all local markets and buy seasonal/ fresh/ local produce/ clothes/ gifts from local craftspeople and artists. You can find markets near you here: www.onlymelbourne.com.au/whatson- melbourne-markets.php (includes markets outside of Melbourne). • Shop at op-shops, community shops, markets and antique shops and find the perfect pre-loved gift. • Give a gift voucher or membership – for the theatre, cinema, a massage or sports club. • Give a home-made voucher to exchange for your time – cook a meal, do the garden, create a home compost or veggie garden, look after the kids, give a massage. • Choose gifts that support greener living, such as fruit trees, herbs, native plant species, bicycles, water/energy saving gadgets and compost bins. • Buy gifts that are made from recycled materials. The Waste Wise Shopping Guide database provides a great list of products made from recycled materials: www.sustainability.vic.gov.au/www/html/1679-waste-wise-shopping-guide.asp. • A fair trade gift will ensure producers are paid a fair price for their products. To find fair trade products, see http://locator.fairtrade.org.nz/locator. • Many environmental and social justice organisations have gift shops, so you can buy a gift which also supports a good cause. • Homemade = Heartfelt. Make your own gifts for friends and family. Create hampers with delicious food items inside, print a design on a tea towel, or check out this website for ideas of quirky and interesting things you can make: www.instructables.com. • Reduce the number of gifts you give by mutually agreeing to have a Kris Kringle — only buy one present each, choose who you give to via names out of a hat and set a limit for how much you spend. • Check out your local environment shop or electrical shop for gifts like solar powered battery chargers and mobile phone chargers, wind-up radios, solar powered bike lights and more. You can also buy lots of sustainable living products from hardware stores, like water saving showerheads and nifty gadgets for keeping the garden alive through the summer heat. • Consider buying someone a gift of a consultation, on how to make their home more sustainable.

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Food

Problem: For many families, food is the central focus of festive season celebrations. It is through food that we connect and share our cultural richness and diversity. Coming together and sharing a meal is a foundation that underlies many of our most important experiences with family and friends. Australians enjoy an abundance of food from local and overseas producers, which is a luxury for us and a potential burden for our planet. Our food choice luxury is particularly evident during our festive season celebrations, when food consumption dramatically increases and we experience those “I-gotta-lie-down” moments after dinner. In this climate of over-indulgence, however, it is too easy to forget the serious and unsustainable impact of much of our food production and delivery:

• Food is often transported long distances to supermarkets which over package the goods on their shelves, often in a ludicrous way. Consider the shelves of plastic-wrapped vegetables and fruits, for instance. • Food that travels a long distance to get to our tables adds to the problem of climate change, hurts local farmers and lowers food quality. • Meat is a Christmas staple but there is no doubt that it adds to our climate crisis. Cows burp methane, so your average serve of meat can be responsible for five kilograms of greenhouse gases. Cows also drink water through their lives before being turned into beef, so while it can take 1600 litres of water to produce a kilo of wheat, it can take a whopping 17,000 litres to produce a kilo of beef. • Australians often prepare too much food and large amounts end up going to landfill — more than half of the average Australian rubbish bin is filled with food scraps, year-round.

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Solution: Ethical feasting Try eating fewer meat and animal-based products. We’re not necessarily advocating that you go out and find a tofu-turkey, but we do strongly recommend that you make sure that there’s not more meat than you can eat. Try reducing meat portions and increasing vegetable options at your Christmas lunch. Seafood is an Australian staple at this time of the year, but many types of seafood are harvested unsustainably: particularly sharks, rays, deep sea fish and species which are long-lived. The Australian Marine Conservation Society (www.amcs.org.au) gives the following advice:

Avoid the following over-fished species » Blue Warehou – also known as trevally, sea bream, snotty trevally » Commerical scallop – also known as Tasmanian scallop, southern scallop » Eastern gemfish – also known as hake, king couta, kingfish »Orange Roughy - also known as deep sea perch, sea perch » Redfish - also known as nannygai, red snapper » Shark - also known as flake » Silver trevally - also known as silver bream, white trevally » Southern blue-fin tuna - also known as tuna » Oreos - also known as deep sea dory, dory » Barramundi farmed in sea cages

Better options include: Australian salmon, blue swimmer crab, bream, calamari, octopus, flathead, King George whiting, leather jacket, mullet, mulloway (if it’s caught wild, avoid it if it’s farmed in sea cages), trevally (but avoid silver trevally), western rock lobster, whiting, abalone from aquaculture, crayfish from aquaculture, and oysters (but avoid Pacific oysters, as these are introduced and have become a pest). If that’s hard to remember, just remember to avoid long-lived fish and deep sea fish, and to buy Australian where possible, because we tend to manage our fisheries better than a lot of other countries.

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The Slow Food Movement began in the 1970s as a response to the rapidly growing and smothering fast food culture. There are now over 700 groups worldwide, with a strong presence here in Australia. Slow food groups promote the joy of food (which can be lost in fast food culture), producing food ethically, increasing connections between producers and consumers, preserving agricultural biodiversity and protecting traditional foods at the risk of extinction. For more information, visit www.slowfoodaustralia.com.au

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The Slow Food Movement

Other sustainable food ideas include buying produce from markets that is unpackaged, organic, fair trade, in season and local. (Also, don’t forget to take your own shopping bags with you!) Try to plan your meal appropriately for the number of people that will be eating to avoid the mountains of food waste at this time of the year. Remember, up to three percent of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions (methane) comes from wasted food sent to landfill – none of which needs to be there. If you are left with too much food, try giving it away. If all else fails, put it in the compost or the worm farm, instead of sending it to landfill. See the further reading section for some tips on composting.

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Decorations Problem: Another thing that gets in the way of a sustainable festive season is our collective mania for Christmas decorations. We can put our hands on our hearts and say that we like decorations, but this year we’re committed to only those decorations that have a minimal impact on the planet. So we’ve identified the most problematic aspects of damaging and superfluous decorations, and later on, we suggest some alternatives. • DISPOSABILITY – many decorations are cheaply made and designed to be thrown away straight after the festivities. As storage-space is a consideration in many homes, people often chose to throw away their bulky decorations and buy new ones the following year. This has clear implications for our growing landfill crisis. • IMPULSIVE BUYING OF DECORATIONS – last-minute and pressured buying often leads to thoughtless and increased consumption. Avoiding this sort of buying can make a big difference to the amount of unnecessary decorations you acquire this festive season. Another problem is that many decorations are truly excessive: families will often spend hundreds of dollars on commercial decorations and items that they could make for a much lower price – for their budgets and the environment. • THE TREE THEY HANG ON – The repository for many of those decorations is also a problem: the pine trees often used for Christmas trees are ultimately damaging to the environment. Pine trees are non-natives and are grown in dense plantations that require high inputs of chemicals and water, exclude native flora and repel native animals.

Solution: ‘Green’ up your festive season Having a sustainable festive season doesn’t mean that you need forgo decorations. It just means that you need to make time and be creative in finding alternatives. Below are some creative and inspiring ideas on how can decorate your home this festive season.

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The Tree: • Rather than buying a plantation pine tree, choose a large potted plant that you already have around the house • Celebrate the natural beauty of indigenous Australia by purchasing a native plant from your local nursery. That way at the end of the festive season you have a living tree suited to your local ecosystem. Of course, if it is not possible to use a living tree, artificial trees can be used as an alternative. Although artificial trees can be used many times, they require a lot of energy to produce and are hard to recycle. Alternatives to lights, tinsel and trinkets: • Make your own decorations from what you have round the house — get friends or family round the table and let your creativity flow. Homemade wreaths can be a good way to get started. • Try making edible decorations: dried fruit, cranberries or popcorn strings are tasty decorations. It’s not compulsory to make your home rival the high street, but if you do crave festive lights there are easy ways to save energy. • Turn off lights when not being viewed. • Look for products using LEDs instead of traditional bulbs - they last 10 times longer and dramatically reduce power use. If everyone replaced their conventional holiday light strings the savings could power thousands of homes all year! • Make sure your lights sparkle with energy from a renewable source. Switching your electricity account to GreenPower will cost you a little more, but not a lot, and will cut your household emissions from electricity to virtually zero. To find out where to get accredited GreenPower go to www.greenpower.gov.au. If you buy something new then make sure that it will be durable – opening the box of stored decorations will bring back great memories…

Making the festive season green is just a tiny bit of what Environment Victoria gets up to. We mobilise people to safeguard our environment. As the state’s peak non-profit environment group, we believe our future depends on all Victorians. That’s why we’re asking all five million to be part of looking after our environment. We’re calling it Green Action. So what do you say? Are you in? Visit www.environmentvictoria.org.au to get more great resources, show your support and be part of changing the world.

Finally, make sure you enjoy yourself.