Archives for posts with tag: David Suzuki

From “David Suzuki’s Queen of Green“, comes this Youtube video:

I am a fan of hers on Facebook. I love Facebook for the tailored information and priceless international contacts I’ve made.

All that aside, though, I am looking forward to buying an orange and a little rum to make my OWN hairspray!

Oh, yes!!!

 Natasha Henderson, Montreal

Fair Trade
Something tells me that I might want to do a little shopping in the next few weeks. In my world, gift giving is fairly important and my peeps love giving gifts at Christmas.  I like to give consumables, such as special foods or the DIY gift ideas I am sharing with everyone this month. These are always a huge hit!  It feels better giving to others in a way that does not overload their lives with stuff that ends up in landfills.

I can get into quite a state thinking about how gift-giving may be hyper-consumeristic and sometimes supports not-so-shining industries.  I try to use this season as an opportunity to tweak gift-giving. I like to do it right under the Christmas tree and in the kitchen too.  It is important for me to buy an organic, free range turkey because I feel sick preparing an industrially-produced one.  I buy organic and fair trade sugar and chocolate. It disturbs me to think that we are eating and celebrating with chocolate that might have been picked by a child (see Carol Off’s Bitter Chocolate).

If I am not going to make things for others, I try to consider my options as to who can do it for me.  This is where gift shopping comes into play. There are many ways of approaching this tradition that do not necessarily cure consumerism, but will make a small difference. Some of these gifts are fair trade, some of them involve making donations to good organizations. Hannah Sung of the Globe and Mail calls into question the scope of such strategies in Philanthropic shopping: to give and to get. Do we really need to get and give so very much? Maybe not.  Can we actually redeem consumerism by tweaking it a bit? Yes, I believe so.

Some DIFY Ideas.

Tammy Schmidt, Montreal.

*In the coming days, we will post some Green Christmas Tips from a few of our friends: Brooke McCartney Langdon, Julie Webb and Jodi Hildebrand!

%d bloggers like this: