I posted last Wednesday about Black Friday striking again, but this weekend I was immensely sorrowed to hear of the death of a store worker on Friday after being trampled by shoppers who burst into the store moments before the scheduled opening. I can’t help but wonder: why? were the deals that great? I don’t think so, I’ve heard lots of people talk about how the deals didn’t seem so good this year after all. Are we all so stressed about money that we just *must* go out and shop for bargains? Are the retailers so concerned they’ll go bankrupt that they’ve stirred up the shopping madness into a verifiable frenzy? Or is it just that we are all a little poorer these days, yet inextricably wedded to the kinds of affluent holidays we’ve been able to afford (or, well, put on credit cards) over the last 10 or 20 years or so?

Shopping tragedies like this aren’t new - anyone remember the fervor over Cabbage Patch Kids? Nearly every one can remember someone who knew of someone who was in a crowd with a trampling (or at least a bunch of mean grannies) back in 1982. But I think everyone agrees that there is no place for tragedy when shopping. What we need now is a critical mass of people to stand up and say: you know what? Christmases full of things we’ll never play with or get around to using. No Impact Man linked to a story that he wrote for Yes! Magazine about his family’s no-present 2007, and other people are standing up as well to say let’s at very least reduce our expectations for the holidays. You know, highly influential people like Oprah.

Don’t get me wrong! I like gifts as much as the next person. But I’m feeling a little boggled that so many people feel so obliged to give so many gifts and gifts of such great worth that they not only get up extremely early on Black Friday, but apparently risk their lives in the pursuit of these gifts at the same time. Gift-giving is very generous and to be highly commended, but somewhere out there the message seems to be a little twisted around.

I’d really like your help with this - can you help to overcome the sad sad stories from Black Friday with some happy ones? I’ll start: I spent Black Friday with three very special guys. We took a train into New York City and braved the holiday traffic at the American Museum of Natural History. We saw dinosaurs and gems and minerals and some really amazing wild animals in gorgeous dioramas. Then we headed back home for pizza night and some well deserved R&R.

And you? How did you spend your Black Friday?

[[Photo of Cabbage Patch Kids by flickr user ciao-chow via creative commons license. Personally, I had three and my little brother had two.]]

Last week on Tiny Choices:

• Monday: Karina updates us on Lush and their follow-through to reduce packaging.
• Tuesday Jenn ponders the amount of DIY vs BUY she does.
• Wednesday: Karina steels her stomach for BLACK FRIDAY, which strikes again!
• Thursday: Jenn tells us of a Thai Temple made of recycled bottles!
• Friday: Tiny Choices Survey: Miranda!
• Saturday: Easy Peasy Tip: Buy Recycled!

The more recycled materials that manufacturers use, the less virgin material (wood chopped, plastic produced, metal mined) needs to be created in the first place– which reduces pollution and waste all around.  And the more folks buy recycled products and create consumer demand for them, the more companies will listen and jump on the bandwagon to make them.

When you’re buying items, don’t forget how loud your dollars speak!

Image by Cogdogblog via Creative Commons]

How do you reside (apartment or house, roommates)?
I live with my roommate in a two bedroom apartment. Maybe this doesn’t count, but I’m also a two minute walk away from my closest friend in town, which is kind of like having a third roommate and a second home at times (that’s a Tiny Choice, right there; make friends with people whose apartments you can go run to if you want to be like John McCain and have too many houses to keep up with!)

Are your housing decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain.
My housing decisions are mostly dictated by the choice to be kind to myself; after all, I could have made the choice to live somewhere like Northampton, Massachusetts (which is hip! and fun! with better restaurants!), but since I’m a grad student at UMass-Amherst, I made the choice to live in walking distance to campus should I choose to skip the bus completely. As far as living with a roommate, it was definitely out of necessity– it cost lots of little $$$$ to live in Fancy Pants, Massachusetts, especially when one is a grad student studying poetry with the a tiny stipend.

How do you travel (transit, car, etc)?
I don’t have a car, which is a weird blessing; it’s forced me to walk and take the bus, as well as be a part of really intense (think: clown cars) carpooling situations. I do have a preference, though; if I can walk somewhere instead of take the bus, I will. Living in western Massachusetts means that I have access to decent public transportation, which is a privilege, but I feel really liberated walking to and from town. It’s made me happier and healthier. A bad day can be nipped in the bud with a graceful boost of endorphins; just remember that! And I also have Big Plans to get a bike in the spring, so wish me luck on that!

Are your travel decisions dictated by choice or necessity? Please explain.
Again, I don’t have a car, so technically my traveling decisions are dictated by necessity, but I honestly forget that! It just seems so natural to get up and walk about town and walk to campus that I hardly think about it anymore. When alternative forms of transportation are so integral to the functioning of a community like Amherst, you just don’t think about it so much, whether it’s a necessity or a choice– maybe it’s both!

Tell us about a Tiny Choice you’ve made in your life.
I feel that I’m very lucky to live in a town that makes it easier for me to adopt a lot of Tiny Choices as part of my personal lifestyle– everything from using reusable bags/mugs to having access to recycling bins to being able to walk and take public transportation. Maybe the tiniest choice I made was moving to a place that lets me do that, which is actually a big choice! I’ve found that being inspired by others helps keep me in check about the eco-unfriendly habits I’m trying to break.

However, one Tiny Choice that is mine, all mine, is that I refuse to make too many copies of worksheets and assignments for my students I teach; I remember being an undergrad and losing half of my worksheets I received, anyway. It’s better to put them online where they can access them from anywhere and save on printing paper. Reducing is the first step, right?

What is the one environmental dilemma you personally struggle the most with?
Laziness. Laziness is what happens when I forget to take my grocery tote bags or my reusable mug, and I just don’t traipse up the three flights of stairs to my apartment to retrieve them. Laziness is what makes me sometimes throw away a plastic bottle instead of recycling it. I’ve become very conscious of how very closely laziness and apathy are related– they’re like kissing cousins! I’m working on it, though; now that I’m aware what’s going on with me on a few bad-lazy weeks, I make a conscious effort to rise above it.

What is one Tiny Choice you can make in that direction?
I’m actually thinking of just keeping my personal mugs and tote bags on me at all times (I usually carry a huge bag to campus, anyway). I often don’t know when I’m going to stop in a little bodega to pick up some food or when I’ll be hit by the coffee bug. I suspect if I keep these objects on me at all times then I have no excuse to waste paper or plastic!

What is the one environmental Tiny Choice you make that people question (in either a positive educational or a negative hassle way) you the most about?
I’m from the Dirty South– Alabama, to be exact, where it’s not as common to pay attention to things like the environment, despite the Welcome to Alabama sign’s insistence that we keep Alabama beautiful. I find that it’s a lot harder to get my family as invested in recycling or buying local– it’s just not done the way it is here in the Pioneer Valley. I guess that’s not one choice, per se, but a whole series of choices that get politely ignored or rejected. We’ll see what happens when I visit home for the holidays! Maybe things will have changed since I’ve been gone! All I can do at this point is lead by example.

What is the one environmental Tiny Choice you would like every single person to adopt?
I would like for car drivers to make better choices when they purchase their cars. If a car is a necessity for where someone lives, then the car should be treated like the kind of consumer choice that matters the most. Necessities have to last, right? And in lasting, they should do good for you and for others. Right now it’s easy to be lulled into a false sense of security with these suspiciously low gas prices, but I think it’s important to remember that the more we save on gas, the more we save on energy in general. It’s a privilege to own a car, so why not go for a car that gets at least 30 mpg (or way way way higher) in your neighborhood?

Do you feel like you make sacrifices for environmentalism? Please explain.
Like I’ve stated earlier, the place I live in makes it feel completely normal to make these choices. If I’m making sacrifices, I wouldn’t know. Then again, I’m privileged to live somewhere that I can do these things; it may be a completely different story when I’m finished with graduate school in three years and have to live elsewhere. I can only hope that this sort of Eco-Friendly Training Camp is giving me the tools and knowledge to be able to handle a time when I may have to make sacrifices.

Are you generally: optimistic, pessimistic, neutral about environmentalism and the future?
I’m optimistic! I believe people are really starting to care, if only on a sort of consumerist level. There are a ton of reasons why people start becoming concerned about their environment– some altruistic, some not so much. Either way, the job is getting done through big and little choices people are making. It’s a beautiful thing.

So, there were these Thai monks who wanted to build a new temple.  They started collecting green and brown glass bottles with which to build– and check out this slideshow of their magnificent creation, containing over one million bottles.  Their outhouse and crematorium are also made of bottles, and they intend to keep collecting bottles for further construction.

Why do I love this so much?  Well,  all of these bottles have been diverted from the waste/recycling stream– but even cooler, the decision to build with preexisting materials prevented new materials from being produced– which means trees weren’t chopped down for lumber, pollution wasn’t spewed from manufacturing bricks, etc.  And this kind of consideration for the environment seems spot-on for folks who believe in a Higher Power of some kind– after all, protecting Her/His/Their/Its creation seems like a no-brainer.

I’m now wishing I had a bit of land on which to build a glass bottle cabin…

[Link from Inhabit]
[Image from Yahoo]

Let’s just start by saying that televisions - especially the big bright plasma TV’s - use a huge amount of energy. You can unplug your TV when you’re not watching it as much as you want, but when it’s on, your TV can pull as much electricity as your refrigerator! Cnet did some research, you can see a list of annual costs of using a television here - some TVs cost over $200 a year to run! The Daily Green has a great summary of the costs over here.

So before you hit the shops looking for a great deal on a new TV, take a gander at the sales fliers and compare the energy use at the Energy Star website. The standards have been upgraded from their old 1998 values, and just in time! If you remember - in 2009 they’re changing the standard for broadcast over from analog television to HDTV, and there will be a lot of people out there looking for a bran’ new television box the Friday after Thanksgiving. You might want to gently share this information with fellow shoppers, if you’re not too fatigued.

And remember - please take care of your e-waste if you do buy a new TV this year!

(And of course, if you want to save money and hang out with loved ones, go ahead - feel TOTALLY FREE to skip black friday. Totally. )

Have you been considering a new TV this year?

[[Photo of TVs from flickr user Jerry W. Lewis via creative commons license.]

• Well, I gave up my beloved Dobies and started making dish scrubbies from vintage scratchy acrylic yarn, the better to clean dishes with
• Stopped buying (even recycled) paper towels and napkins, and now use rags and cloth napkins
• Gave up my formerly-beloved facial scrub and now use straight baking soda, which has made my skin fabulously happy.
• Stopped buying, and started making, toothpaste.
• I haven’t quite made it to hankies yet, but haven’t bought any tissues in a while.
• I made milkpaint for my bedroom wall (which I’ve yet to write about…)

My fabulous co-blogger Karina makes:

• Her own skirts! She’s so cool.
• Homemade dish soap
• Her 2008 calendar

What are some things you’ve been DIYing instead of BUYing?

[Image by Ninahale via Creative Commons]

The total recycled content in all LUSH packaging is about 89% (including paper bags, aluminium tins, gift wrap, ribbons, boxes, tags and inserts). That means that for every ton of material bought by LUSH, 900kg come from recycled sources.

• Our pots and bottles are made with 100% post-consumer recycled (PCR) plastic, saving about 65 tons of CO2 and 90 tonnes of virgin plastic, or 800 barrels of oil, each year. Visit our Customer Forum for fun ways to reuse your LUSH pots.
• Our carrier bags are made with 100% post-consumer recycled paper, saving 100 tonnes of CO2 each year. They’re now 2 grams lighter too which reduces emissions even more.
• We use biodegradable plastic bags and eco-friendly packing tape to protect products for shipment. Our packing tape is fully recyclable, tamperproof, tamper-evident, and is stronger per square inch than polypropylene (the old plastic stuff).
• Our gifts are lovingly wrapped with recycled paper and protected using shredded wood or recycled shredded paper, both of which are 100% biodegradable

I’m pretty excited that Lush is still moving towards less waste. I love how they make a point of saying on the yellow bag “once it’s lost its usefulness.” And I am *really* excited about the happy gift of soap from my friend.

Any thoughts about packaging? Have you been able to minimize the amount of packaging you bring home with you in any way?

Last week on Tiny Choices:

• Monday: Karina gushes about Chico bags and the Team Tiny Choices love for them. Also - Hey! Submit to the Carnival of Green Crafts!
• Tuesday: Jenn shares an awesome opportunity to Knit for Good -  a scarf drive in NYC.
• Wednesday: Karina proudly announces that Brita is gearing up to take back used water filters!
• Thursday: Jenn ruminates on how best to teach children about environmentalism.
• Friday: Tiny Choices Survey: Meredith!
• Saturday: Easy Peasy Tip: Drink Loose Tea!

• Trees being chopped for the teabag paper, and the resulting paper being produced and shipped
• Cotton being grown and sprayed for the string, and that cotten being bleached, manufactured into string, and shipped around
• Trees being chopped and paper produced for the hangtag, and ink being produced/shipped to print on those tags

All you need to do is set a simple strainer in your mug, add tea leaves and hot water, and you’re good to go (seems like a bamboo strainer would be the greenest choice here). Plus, used tea leaves are gold for compost piles.

[Image by motograph via Creative Commons]