Hanna Schlegel
If there is one time of the year where you are missing family and friends more than ever whilst studying abroad, it is the Christmas season. This is exacerbated by the fact that the majority of fellow foreign friends that you have undoubtedly made in your new city, go home if their homes are near enough. Coming from South Africa, 13 hours or so of flying and exorbitant airline prices over the festive period made it difficult for me to return home, and although I sorely missed our warm summery Christmas-by-the-pool-side traditions, Stockholm brought many wintry delights my way: snow, ice skating and beautiful Christmas lights. I was also grateful for one other thing: no requirement to purchase Christmas presents.
How to gift green this year
If there is one time of the year where you are missing family and friends more than ever whilst studying abroad, it is the Christmas season. This is exacerbated by the fact that the majority of fellow foreign friends that you have undoubtedly made in your new city, go home if their homes are near enough. Coming from South Africa, 13 hours or so of flying and exorbitant airline prices over the festive period made it difficult for me to return home, and although I sorely missed our warm summery Christmas-by-the-pool-side traditions, Stockholm brought many wintry delights my way: snow, ice skating and beautiful Christmas lights. I was also grateful for one other thing: no requirement to purchase Christmas presents.
Not that I don’t love presents (giving and getting!), but
over Christmas this tends to become a feeding frenzy and marketing teams are
working their hardest to ensure you purchase things your most likely don’t
need. The generation of waste in developed countries such as Europe is quite
astounding to investigate (see this
article for more stats on this), and although European countries have some
of the best waste handling programs in the world (recycling, re-use and
minimum waste-to-landfill), it must be noted that much of the old clothing and
technology that people get rid of here, ends up in a second-hand market
somewhere in a developing country. And although that sounds like everything is
fine and well, the generation and consumption of these consumables still
greatly outweighs the second-hand benefits, and leads to an accumulation.
Synthetic materials, as you can imagine, take many, many years to break down (up
to 1 000 years for sneakers)!
Fortunately for the world over, there are many alternative
presents to buy in order to let your loved ones know you are thinking of them.
My particular favorite, is the buying of trees. Greenpop,
a South African-born social enterprise that plant trees, food gardens and
perform workshops on eco-education, have a nifty ‘Gift Trees’ option on their
website. The trees cost very little, and are planted in reforestation projects
in Southern Africa. When you buy one, it comes with a cute personalized certificate
that you can pass on to your family and friends – over email – with no waste
generation at all on your part, and all the warm fuzzies for bettering the
planet in the festive period, where I’m sure transport-induced CO2
levels sky-rocket (quite literally). And there are more just like this: check
out Grow-Trees, and Friends of
Trees and find the one which best embodies your tree-planting dreams.
Now, this post would surely have been more useful before
Christmas than after, I am aware – but as the Chinese proverb goes: ‘The best
time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second best time is now.’ - I hope you can find a use for tree-gifting in
2017!
[Image source: http://www.presreed.com/sites/default/files/press-release/files/Image_3.jpg ]
[Image source: http://www.presreed.com/sites/default/files/press-release/files/Image_3.jpg ]
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