How to have a happy – and low-carbon – holiday

Opportunities abound, experts say, to make the season merry, bright – and 'green.'

from the November 26, 2007 edition

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In other cases, taking the greener road can bring expenses down. For example, the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), an advocacy group, encourages those who shop online and from catalogs to opt for ground shipping rather than air. The reason: Ground shipping is six times more efficient than air shipping, which means fewer carbon emissions per package, says the NRDC. Ground shipping saves money, too, but shoppers may need to place orders sooner to make sure they arrive on time.

Despite a proliferation of greener options, the holidays inherently pose challenges to ecofriendly living. Jack Yates, a professor of psychology at Northern Iowa University, says he's well aware that the season's rituals – from operating ovens and stoves for hours on end to traveling long distances for short visits – tend to be very energy-intensive. To contain the family's environmental footprint, he and his wife use some LED lighting around their Cedar Falls, Iowa, house and turn off their holiday lights when they go out or go to bed. But they still use some incandescent holiday bulbs because he couldn't find LED ones in his preferred color, white. And, he says, they're not about to start preparing holiday meals in a microwave oven even though that would be more efficient than a conventional stove.

"I'm going to save energy 365 days a year, but there are some things that are very important to me," Professor Yates says. "I'm sure there are energy-efficient ways of doing [a holiday feast], but we do it the traditional way. I just feel you have to have a balance here between the desire to save energy and important family traditions."

The costs of holiday travel

In terms of ecological impact, the most egregious holiday habit is flying, Professor Kaza says. Air travel often involves longer distances than car travel and so produces more carbon, says Daniel Sperling, director of the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of California-Davis. Planes on average generate more emissions on a per-passenger, per-mile basis than cars with two or more passengers, he says.

Kaza takes such considerations to heart. To save on emissions, she sees certain family members, who live as far away as the West Coast and Britain, only every other year at the holidays.

For those less inclined to sacrifice, the holiday dinner table provides an easy venue to showcase one's greener side. That's because regionally traditional dishes, such as squash in New England, rely on local ingredients that haven't traveled thousands of miles on carbon-coughing vehicles. In that sense, those who go green when preparing holiday feasts may wind up renewing some seasonal traditions rather than displacing or reinventing them, says Jennifer Powers, spokeswoman for NRDC.

Choose ecofriendliest gifts

And there may even be hope for greening the yearly shopping bonanza. Just about every gift category offers options that are more ecofriendly than others, according to Mark Spellun, editor in chief and publisher of Plenty, a green lifestyle magazine. Example: cellphones. Among the best for minimizing environmental impact, he says, are Credo models whose chargers can have a solar-power option.

Among the worst, he notes, is Apple's iPhone. Replacing the iPhone's rechargeable batteries involves shipping the phone back to Apple and paying $85.95. That creates an incentive to junk it in a couple of years and buy an upgrade, Spellun says. That means more electronics are likely to end up in a landfill, despite Apple's recycling program.

To be sure, the greening of the holidays won't work for everyone. Those who take a pass on going green in December need not wallow in guilt, Yates says, but they should remember their seasonal excesses when January arrives.

"We all have choices," Yates says. "Maybe you want to travel for Thanksgiving or Christmas…. You may not be able to cut back on your holiday energy use. But there are other things you can probably do to cut back and save carbon."

www.catalogchoice.org

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