30. Give Consciously
For this weeks’ #52climatesolutions, we ask you to give consciously for the benefit of the planet, your loved ones and you. Here's how to do it simply, even at the last minute!
Humans are generally awesome at celebrating. We celebrate people, events, anniversaries and triumphs, and in many different ways. Celebrating is often viewed as a time to let go and indulge. But even seemingly trivial celebratory practices can contribute to the growing problems of pollution and environmental harm. Waste quantities and the use of fossil fuels in the production, transportation and consumption of goods, consistently increases around Christmas time. But there is no need for our celebrations to exacerbate climate change, given these are activities completely of our choosing.
At this time of year, a lot of people are preparing for Christmas by buying gifts for loved ones. So, for this weeks’ #52climatesolutions, we ask you to give consciously. Rather than buying into the latest fad or buying expensive new, wasteful gifts that your loved ones could live without, consider alternatives. Make a gift, upcycle something broken into something useful and beautiful, or buy secondhand. Think about the needs and principles of the person receiving your gift, and aim to support their way of living. Perhaps they asked you not to buy plastic toys, or asked for no plastic or paper wrap so try to do that – wrap gifts in fabric or recycled paper, instead. Consider re-gifting - giving away something that you don’t need, but that others may find useful. Source handmade (whether made by you or someone else) and locally made. Consider making them something delicious or luxurious to eat or pamper themselves with.
One of our favourite approaches is to adopt the four-gift rule as a guide – giving something they want, something they need, something to wear and something to read. You might like to give experiences over things - time spent together doing something special, or a workshop in something they’d like to learn.
We don’t need to overload people's lives with unnecessary stuff, otherwise, is that a gift or a burden? Think about the longevity of your gifts. What purpose do they serve, for how long, and what will happen at the end of your gift’s life – will it go to landfill, or be composted, providing a ‘final’ gift of nutrients to the soil?
On a personal note…
Last year we gave all secondhand gifts, which we wrote about a couple of weeks ago. This year our focus is on experiences, secondhand and smaller gifts we’ve shopped for locally. We’ll all get a fave record too!
Something we also changed up with extended family last year was, instead of sending each other small individual gifts, we used the money we’d have spent on each other on a large household gifts we chose for ourselves. The deal was everyone had to take photos of themselves enjoying the bigger gifts through the year and share them with the family. It means things like camping trips, concert tickets and even visiting each other interstate could finally happen - side bonus was not needing to run around buying things and getting to the post office on time. We’re not sure if we’ll do it every year, but it’s sure helped our extended family through some super challenging/busy/expensive years where the mental load needed to be reduced. And we could choose ethical family gifts that were just right.
Have you switched up any traditions to keep things simpler? Have you ditched the Christmas thing altogether? Or do you love things as they are? Let us know! We want to hear about it!
Now for the shameless plug…
We still have lots of signed copies of our book ‘A Family Guide To Waste-Free Living’, 52 Climate Solutions art prints and tea towels available, as well as a giant lot of Living Landscapes card games. We’re shipping everything with a free express post upgrade before Sunday night, so it’ll arrive before Christmas. A perfect gift for gently encouraging some positive actions and conversations in the new year! And if you’re after something completely different, maybe a secondhand record or voucher from our other project/shop, Suffragette Records!
Or… if you’ve loved following this newsletter/Substack this year (thank you!), you might consider giving someone a gift subscription.
Paid members, we’ve made this post available to the public because it’s short and sweet (having one of those weeks!), but there’ll be more just for you in coming weeks. We really want to talk about how waste-free living saves us time, and share some spesh family recipes - among so many other ideas we have for this space. Let us know if there’s something you’d like us to write about, too!
We hope you’ve had a lovely week and your weekend continues on swimmingly.
Much love,
Lauren & Oberon.