Green Sexy

The Short, Tragic Lives of Farm Animals

I found this ultra-disturbing video on ChooseVeg.com about the ill-treatment of commercially-raised animals, from when they're born until they're led to slaughter.  In one portion of this ten-minute video, a cow is castrated, has its horns snipped off, and is repeatedly branded---all without any anesthesia.  In another part of the video, chickens are "debeaked" so that they won't peck at each other in their disturbingly-cramped cages. 

My wife and I eat vegetarian meals as often as we can, but more and more we find it difficult to reconcile our meat-eating ways.  We have taken measures in the past, such as buying meat from a farmer who specialized in organically-raised cows, and have looked into buying eggs from families who keep chickens in their backyards and sell the eggs from these free range chickens, but our guilt sometimes is hard to reconcile. 

This video may push us closer to vegetarianism---watch it and let me know what you think.

How to Recycle Your Christmas Tree

According to Earth911.com, "Between 30 and 35 million real Christmas trees are sold in the U.S. each year. Luckily, about 93 percent of those trees are currently being recycled through more than 4,000 available recycling programs."  That's encouraging news!  One of the most common ways old trees are recycled is as mulch for playgrounds, trails, landscaping, etc.  There are many other novel ways that used Christmas trees are being recycled and reused, from providing habitat for animals, to helping to stop erosion. 

Each January, 400 old Christmas trees are strapped to a concrete block and dumped in Lake Havasu, which is a man-made desert lake located in Arizona and California.  These trees, which take a decade to decompose, form a reef for young bass, bluegills and other fish.  This provides protection and a habitat for the fish, and has considerably improved the fishing in Lake Havasu.

For the past 16 years donated Christmas trees have been used as a wetland preserver in southern Louisiana's coastal marshes.  The used trees are converted into four-foot-tall cribs that help to collect the sediment from the water as it rushes in.  Eventually, the sediment builds up behind the crib to form new land that helps to build up the eroded shore.

In Tomahawk, Wisconsin, the Packaging Corporation of America burns about 500 used trees a year as a source of power for their paper mills.  The resulting steam powers the mill for ten minutes.

On Baker Lake Island in Cook County, Illinois, volunteers prop used trees on foot-tall steel pipes to provide nests for herons and egrets.

To find the nearest Christmas tree recycling program near you, visit Earth911.com, or click on the previous link.

Packaging Gifts the Green Way

 Whether you meticulously peel off the tape or voraciously tear into your presents, piles of wrapping paper often times adorn people's living rooms during this holiday season.  If you've been making a habit of buying up rolls upon rolls of cute wrapping paper every year, just think of all the resources that go into making that wrapping paper---from trees to dyes, to electricity, fuel used in shipping, etc.---you could be doing the Earth harm while trying to bring happiness. 

So what can you do?  For one, reuse wrapping paper or gift bags that you had from the previous holiday season.  Heck, it seems like my family has been using the same wrapping paper and gift bags for years now, and no one seems to mind, since it's what's inside that is truly memorable.  The Guardian suggests that you use nice festively-colored shopping bags that you've gotten from stores as wrapping paper, or even cutting up old gift bags and using those to wrap with.  Another idea they put forth is using interesting magazine pictures or maps as wrapping paper.  The way some teens plaster their walls with pictures of their idols, this could be a fun way for a kid to wrap up a gift.  You could try wrapping your presents in sections of the paper that speak to the personality of the person who is receiving the gift---the sports section for the jock, the comics for the joker, the editorial section for the opinionated one, etc.  They also suggest using left over fabric, gift scarves, or clothing items from a thrift store to wrap your presents in.  A final innovative idea is to wrap your presents in aluminum foil, which will add a real shine and glimmer to your display and can be washed and reused to wrap holiday treats or leftovers in!

If using recycled materials as a means of packaging your gifts doesn't tickle your fancy, then there are some eco-friendly products that you can purchase to help decorate your gifts.  National Geographic's The Green Guide suggests Paporganics' hemp-blend wrap that is made from 90 percent post-consumer fiber with 10 percent hemp.  Paper Mojo makes gift wraps made from jute, lokta or banana fiber---that could impress as much as the gift itself!  For gift bags, you could go with Global Exchange's Native Leaf Gift Bags made in the Philippines using certified less-toxic dyes. Not only is Global Exchange a fair-trade organization, but they will also wrap any of its products in a 100 percent recycled box, tied with a raffia ribbon and accompany it with a recycled rice-paper greeting card for $3.95.  Recycled-fabric gift bags can be purchased from Patagonia.  To fill your gift bags, you could purchase white tissue paper made from 90 percent recycled paper and colored tissue made from 75 percent recycled fibers through Nashville Wraps.  

Well, hope you have a great holiday, and if you're anything like me, you'll have a nice, neatly-folded pile of used wrapping paper next to you, ready to be stored and reused next year!