Conservation 101: the Compete to Conserve Blog

Do you believe “giving more” isn’t the same thing as “buying more”? Are you planning to celebrate the holidays in a way that won’t tax your wallet — or the planet? Well, now is your time to shine! Because from now until Monday, January 5, 2009,* Compete to Conserve invites you to enter our first annual holiday competition: “Give More & Use Less.”

Share Your Ideas for a Green Holiday Season

Post photos, videos, or a simple written entry on our official competition page: http://www.competetoconserve.com/competition/view/14/coming-soon-give-more-and-use-less-holiday-competition

One Grand Prize Winner Will Receive Our Ultimate Green Your House Gift Bag, Which Includes:

• One reuseable bag made from recycled materials

Share your ideas to win our Ultimate Green Your House Gift Bag (valued at $125).

• One Compete to Conserve baseball hat

• One .6-liter reuseable SIGG water bottle

• Six water-saving faucet aerators

• One shower shut-off valve

• One hot-water gauge

• Four 60-watt soft white CFLs

• One 32-ounce bottle of Lucky Earth Waterless Car Wash

• One 16-oune bottle of Mrs. Meyer’s Clean Day Countertop Spray

• One Energizer rechargeable compact battery charger with rechargeable batteries

How Will You Use Less?

There are lots of opportunities to use less during the holiday season, whether it’s hosting a party, giving gifts, decorating, or simply sharing time with family and friends. Tell the Compete to Conserve community what you’re doing, and you can inspire others — as well as win a bounty of green prizes to start your new year right.

* Be sure to post your entry by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time to be entered to win our Ultimate Green Your House Gift Bag.

Every year, even in flush economic times, my family says we’ll pull back on holiday spending — there’s nothing we really need. We all like the idea of giving to charity, but it’s still nice to have something to unwrap Christmas morning, especially for the kids. So here’s a list of five conservation-minded charities the staff of Compete to Conserve thinks make great gifts:

© Davide R. Schrichte. All rights reserved. A manatee nurses her calf.

For just $25, you can adopt the manatee of your choice and keep tabs on your adoptee throughout the year. An adoption includes:

• A photo of your manatee (we have our manatees’ photos framed on our wall at home)
• Your manatee’s biography
• An adoption certificate
• A membership handbook
• Four newsletters throughout the year with updated reports on your adoptee

The club also sells children’s books and plush manatees that make great gifts for kids. Money raised from the club goes toward protecting endangered manatees and their habitat, much of it in Florida.

Adopt a manatee at: http://www.savethemanatee.org/adoptpag.htm

photo credit: Lord Biro

Defenders of Wildlife

We’ve got a soft spot for penguins, but you can also adopt other animals, including wolves, polar bears, snow leopards, sea turtles, and beluga whales. Most of the adoptions start at $25 and include a small plush toy, photo, and fact sheet.

Money raised goes toward protecting imperiled wildlife and wild lands through education, outreach, and political and legal action.

Adopt the animal of your choice at: https://secure.defenders.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=wagc_homepage#AllAnimals

Surfrider Foundation

photo credit: mikebaird

Who doesn’t love the beach and think our coastal waters should be protected for all to enjoy? Even non-surfers can support the Surfrider Foundation’s mission to educate the public about threats to our coasts and to encourage grassroots activism.

For $44, you can give the gift of a membership to the Surfrider Foundation, which includes:

• An organic Limited Edition Surfrider Foundation t-shirt or all-purpose tote bag
• Six issues of the Making Waves newsletter
• A sticker to show your support

Purchase a membership at: https://www.surfrider.org/membership/gift_membership3.cfm?specialGift=holiday

photo credit: nojhan

Heifer International

Heifer International aims to stamp out world hunger through community involvement and sustainable development. Donors may fund a specific project, such as natural resource management in Tanzania, or pay to provide an impoverished family with livestock.

Buy livestock for a family at: http://www.heifer.org/site/c.edJRKQNiFiG/b.204586/
Fund a project at: http://www.heifer.org/site/?c=edJRKQNiFiG&b=3538797&msource=pcb07

Register for the charities you want to support.

Think of it as the philanthropist’s gift card. Changing the present allows you to register for charities, in the same way a bride registers for gifts. If you’re serious about not getting gifts this holiday (or Valentine’s Day, birthday, wedding, any event at all), this is a great way to let friends and family get you something you want — and let them get a tax deduction, too.

Register at: http://www.changingthepresent.org/registries

photo credit: miss_rogue

Wrap rage, the anger, frustration, and, sometimes, injury that occurs when opening a new package will hit its annual peak this December. Instead of kissing under mistletoe or roasting chestnuts, millions of consumers will instead spend time untwisting sharp, poky twist ties and slicing through airtight plastic clamshell packaging that seems better suited to seal off biological weapons than iPods.

For people trying to conserve resources, wrap rage is particularly vexing because, in the end, they’re left with piles of waste that can be neither reused (how many twist ties can one family really use?) or recycled (just because there’s a recycle symbol on a plastic bag doesn’t mean your local recycling facility will accept it). Paying customers are also annoyed knowing that much of this packaging is produced to deter shoplifters. (It’s also designed to make shipping and stocking more efficient.) Remember the terrible wasteful 6×12-inch cardboard box CDs used come packaged in? Consumers complained enough to rid the industry of the boxes. Now a new generation is aiming to put an end to wrap-rage packaging.

Some, fed up with overconsumption and inspired by the “reduce” movement, say that the best way to avoid wrap rage is to not buy anything–or at least not buy anything overpackaged or sealed in a clamshell. That would mean swearing off all electronics and many toys. So while there are merits to this argument, like other abstinence-only pledges, it may not be realistic. The cultural traditions and comforts of giving and receiving gifts during the holidays run strong.

One happy medium suggestion is to reduce the number of gifts you buy this season. Faced with economic uncertainty, many consumers are already pledging to buy less this year (much to the dismay of retailers). In light of mindful holiday buying, Amazon.com is hoping its “Frustration-Free Packaging Initiative” will lure shoppers fed up with overpackaging.

The Seattle-based online retailer has teamed with toy maker Mattel, electronics manufacturer Transcend, and Microsoft to sell 19 products that use less packaging and are easier to open. Amazon says, for example, the Fisher-Price Imaginext Adventures Pirate Ship “is now delivered in an easy-to-open, recyclable cardboard box. The new packaging eliminates 36 inches of plastic-coated wire ties, 1,576.5 square inches of printed corrugated package inserts and 36.1 square inches of printed folding carton materials. Also eliminated are 175.25 square inches of PVC blisters, 3.5 square inches of ABS molded styrene and two molded plastic fasteners.” Transcend memory cards will be shipped in recyclable cardboard rather than plastic clamshells.

Nineteen is an awfully small number of products to choose from. And it won’t end wrap rage overnight. But it’s a start.

photo credit: thadman

With the “slide” toward the holidays starting pretty much after Halloween, and with the economy as it is, many people are already budgeting or even shopping for the upcoming season. Now, perhaps more than ever, people are looking for gifts worth giving, especially for those “hard to buy for” people.

Add to the lack of ideas the fact that—for many of us—our parents, grandparents, or in-laws have expressed they no longer want “gifts.” They are busy clearing out and downsizing—sometimes even delivering boxes of stuff long since left behind, under the auspices of not being sure if we still want them.

For Christmas a couple of years ago, the in-laws drew the biggest blank for me. I was working steadily down the “list” of family and friends, jotting down gift ideas, and found myself skipping them on each pass. In trying to figure out what to give someone who didn’t want anything, I came across Heifer International. (Care of a flyer that somehow ended up in my mailbox—a rare case of welcomed direct mail.)

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