Opinion: Give green—no, not cash—for Christmas

This is a time of year when we could seriously endanger the earth further, simply by trying to be good to each other and give each other gifts. I’m usually someone who likes to give the latest and greatest technology, like robotic vacuum cleaners or iPod shuffles, but this year I’m doing something completely different.  I’m going to make my gifts part of the solution, not part of the landfill.

Greensender which launched recently, offers a box of goodies that can make you feel somewhat less guilty about gift giving. From the convenience of your office (no driving to the mall), you can order a box that contains a re-usable plastic water bottle, a recycled cotton t-shirt, a re-usable canvas grocery bag, and a compact fluorescent light bulb.

This package can help your friends and relatives get started on the sustainability trail without making gigantic sacrifices. The philosophy of the Greensender is that even small changes can make a differences, and that no one thing is going to save the planet. It’s a matter of everyone doing a little something.

Another "green giving" site, Let’s Go Green, sells eco-friendly products for the home.  It sells paper, plastic, light bulbs, lighting, and canvas totes, and it encourages green giving. On its home page is one fairly shocking statistic: if every family replaced one roll of toilet paper with a recycled roll, we’d save a mllion trees, and if every household replaced one light bulb with a CFL, it would be like taking a million cars off the road.

While these statistics sound too optimistic for me, I hope they encourage everyone to consider giving things that help the earth rather than things that pollute it. The One Laptop per Child program makes an eco-friendly, inexpensive laptop designed for use by children in developing countries. But there’s no reason American children can’t use it as well, and for the next week OLPC is running a promotion where you can give one laptop away and get one free for a child in your life.

Last, Amazon.com has a book called Simply Green by Danny Seo, that teaches you to make wrappings, ornaments and decorations from every day materials.

So there’s no excuse this holiday season for the plastic trash bags full of cast off boxes, bags, wrappers, and garbage that have been the byproduct of past Christmases.