Twelve Days of a Green Christmas

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A turkey in a pear tree? No, I hear you say, there's more chance of it snowing in August!

Did you know that when not forced to live in cruel, cramped, filthy conditions in factory farms, turkeys spend their days caring for their young, building nests, foraging for food, taking dustbaths, preening their feathers and roosting high in trees and it could even be a pear tree.

According to the British Turkey website 10 million units of turkey were sold over Christmas 2007 in the UK. Each year 300 million turkeys are slaughtered annually in the USA (source GoVeg.com).

What these statistics do not tell you is how the majority of these turkeys were reared. For factory farmed turkeys, for 5 - 6 months life consists of trying to exist in an area barely bigger than the roasting tin in which they will eventually be cooked.

Compassion in World Farming believes that no animal should be factory reared and scores UK supermarkets on their meat production policies. Check out their website to see how well your favourite supermarket is doing and where you can buy meat that has been farmed ethically and compassionately.

If you are going to have turkey at Christmas, or Thanksgiving, then buy one that is free range. Or you could always have a Vegetarian Christmas. Look at the alternative to turkey that Pamela Anderson was promoting in 2007 on behalf of GoVeg.com.

According to The World Watch Institute, between 5 and 6 TRILLION plastic bags were produced around the world in 2002. Plastic bags do horrendous damage to wildlife and the environment. But all over the world many stores still insist on handing them out. As shoppers, we have the power to put a stop to this by refusing to accept them.

So do the world a favour! If you don't have a tote bag, put it on your Christmas list. Then do the world a bigger favour and give them as gifts to your friends.

There is a fantastic selection of purses and tote bags at Ethical Superstore

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Green cards? No, no, no! Not work permits for the USA, recycled cards!

According to the Royal Mail, in the UK we send over 75,000,000 (yes seventy five million) Christmas cards each year. In the USA, according to a question asked on Yahoo, it is 1.9 billion. In 2008 the UK organisation the Woodland Trust launched an appeal to recycle 100 million cards, so that 24,000 trees could be planted.

You can do your bit by either buying recycled cards, or make new cards out of the cards you received last year. And if you don't fancy any arts and crafts, please make sure you put any unwanted cards in for recycling at your local waste disposal centre or at the shops that offer the facility.

In the UK you can buy ethically produced Christmas cards from

Going "eco-friendly" often involves more expense but Soapnuts are very economical to use and a lot cheaper than normal detergents and fabric conditioners. I have seen estimates ranging from savings of between 50% - 75%.

Four soap nuts is usually enough to wash 3 family loads of coloured clothing. Buy a bag to try yourself, buy a bag to give to friends - they come in various sizes - the soapnuts, I mean, not your friends! Put a small bag in Christmas Stockings.

Go on, go nuts!

UK Suppliers

According to Observer Magazine, some 140,000 tonnes of gold are stored in bank vaults worldwide, while just 2,500 tonnes of "new" gold is mined each year.

While old gold is hoarded or languishes unused in the bottom of countless jewellry boxes, mining this quantity of "new" gold causes a disproportionate amount of ecological chaos. The "carbon footprint", or should I say "gold footprint", of an average gold ring includes around 18 tonnes of waste and 5 tonnes of water. In drought ridden Honduras, a large gold mine will draw around 220 gallons of water per minute. As for the human cost, between 1990 and 1998 more than 30,000 people were displaced by gold mining.

In the USA Wal-Mart now sells more gold than anyone else. Once again the solution is in the hands of the consumer. As long as YOU keep buying it then Wal-Mart will keep selling it.

Greenkarat, not only sells ethically produced jewellry in the USA, they will make rings for you from gold donated by you, your friends and family - what a great way to recycle all those broken gold chains!

In the UK Fifi Bijoux say "We source the gold for our jewellery exclusively from fair trading, co-operative mines with eco-sustainabilty and environmental stewardship. We only purchase gold from small scale, artisanal mines."

Ethical gold jewellry from Fifi Bijoux is available from

......or cows, or pigs or sheep. Even Llamas!

Heifer International believes that a holistic approach is necessary in order to build sustainable communities.

The Heifer International website says:

This year marks the 65th anniversary of Heifer's mission to end hunger and poverty. Everyone at Heifer proudly celebrates this milestone anniversary and the 12 million lives that have been changed because of the support of all of our donors, volunteers and staff around the globe.

Today, there are 800 projects in more than 50 countries. This amazing and inspiring accomplishment is made possible by a global commitment to give families a chance for self-reliance and hope.

Heifer projects around the world help families achieve self-reliance through the gift of livestock and training. Each recipient of an animal pledges to give back to their own community one of the offspring of each animal they receive to a neighbour in need and in this way whole communities can be transformed.

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Janey Lee Grace tells us in her excellent book Imperfectly Natural Home, in the UK alone we throw out 80 square kilometres of Christmas wrapping paper, which would cover an area half the size of Washington DC or the whole of the island of Guernsey! Other sources say that the USA uses enough Christmas wrapping paper to cover the whole of Washington DC!

So please buy recycled Christmas wrapping paper and then recycle it!

Ethical Superstore has a great range of recycled Christmas gift wrap

Waste on line states that annually total glass use in the UK is estimated at around 3.6 million tonnes. The UK glass industry has the capacity to recycle over one million tonnes of glass each year and this coupled with glass' unique ability to be infinitely recycled without ruining the quality means there is just no excuse to not recycle glass.

Making recycled glass uses less energy because crushed recycled glass melts at a lower temperature than the original components of glass. In the USA about 20% of glass is recycled.

About the Producer:
CRISIL is a glass-making factory situated in Cochabamba, central Boliva. It is a family-owned business begun by two brothers, Carlos and Walter Bustos, after one of them spent some years in the USA but wanted to return to his home country.

CRISIL currently employs around 100 people as well as providing employment for used-bottle collectors who supply the factory with glass for recycling. CRISIL has been involved in product development consultation and been given technical assistance in recent years to help the business develop.

These glasses are available from

Close-up of Wooden Toy Giraffes Photographic Print
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Look for toys made from sustainably managed forests and be careful of toxic paint. Buy toys that are painted with plant based dyes or paints containing no toxic chemicals.

Wooden toys may not offer all of the same glitz and glamour that typical plastic toys have, but they also have less of the dangerous wrappings. All that plastic and paper packaging, the fuel used to transport the toys, and the pollution created by the factories making the toys quickly mounts up.

Many parents are now choosing to buy simple wooden toys, often hand created by local craftsmen (or women).

You can find wooden toys at

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The World Land Trust in the UK and in the USA works "with local partners to buy tropical rainforests and other threatened habitats to protect the most endangered species forever."

$100 or £50 will buy an acre of rain forest in your name or someone you wish to gift it to. My certificate is on my office wall!

Current projects include focusing on land acquisition and management in four important areas, which have been identified as critical to preserving dwindling habitat for many threatened and endangered species. The areas are the Ecuadorian Andes and rainforests in Columbia, Brazil and Paraguay.

Buy handmade decorations made from recycled or eco-friendly materials. If possible make sure it is Fair trade as well. Buying Fairtrade is a great way to support disadvantaged people all over the world.

While some of these crafts may not be from recycled materials they provide much needed income to people often living in poverty that we could not possibly imagine.

You can find Fair Trade or Recycled Christmas decorations in lots of online stores these days, including:

Angels With Attitude from Gifts with Humanity, who say:

These 3 inch angels, made from recycled cold drink cans, are made by Zulu school children as an extra-mural activity. These students live in an area of Northern Zululand where the AIDS epidemic is very high, and are themselves orphans who have been left destitute.

The purchase of this item impacts the student directly, assisting them to feed, clothe and educate themselves and at the same time giving them a sense of pride and self-worth.

Each Angel is unique and sold individually. Please let Gifts with Humanity select one for you.

In October 2007, the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, whose archiepiscopal seat is in the same city as the confectioner Nestlé Rowntree, said that buying only Fairtrade chocolate would help to end the "21st-century iniquity" of child labour.

Citing research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, he said that although child labour was prohibited in Britain there was a connection with Britain's manufacturers because of the conditions under which cocoa was produced.

According to the Stop the Traffik campaign for an end to modern slavery, more than 12,000 trafficked children are working on Ivory Coast plantations to produce 43 per cent of the world's cocoa beans.

Extract from article published in The Times, on 31 October 2007. You can read the rest of the article here

About Divine Fair trade chocolate:

Choosing Divine for your chocolate gifts is an ethical way of playing your part in a more equitable trading partnership. Divine is the only Fairtrade chocolate company which is 45% owned by the farmers. While Fairtrade ensures farmers receive a better deal for their cocoa and additional income to invest in their community, company ownership gives farmers a share of Divine's profits and a stronger voice in the cocoa industry. That's ethical business!

Read more . . . .

These Fair trade chocolates are available from

Gifts With Humanity is proud to be a member of The Fair Trade Federation and IFAT the World Fair Trade Organization.