Environmentally Friendly Holidays

Thanksgiving is supposed to be a time to be thankful for what we have.  This holiday, like most, has been much skewed from its original meaning.  Instead of being thankful for what we have, we instead over eat, over use, over indulge, and typically don’t do much to be thankful for the earth and all that it’s provided for us.  I want this year’s thanksgiving to be different for me and for many others out there.

I think there is many different ways to have an environmentally friendly thanksgiving.  My first suggestion I came up with when researching my last blog entry.  It is to plant a tree.  This is a great activity that gets the whole family involved and can become an environmentally healthy and fun sustainable tradition.  It would also be fun to remember past holidays by having different trees to visit in the future. 

One of the biggest ways I am going to change my thanksgiving this year is by trying to incorporate reducing, reusing and recycling into the holidays.  Instead of over eating, over using, and over buying I am going to try to work with what I have and buy and consume a much smaller amount than previous years.  I don’t believe this will be a challenge because for myself, and I’m sure many others, just being aware of my affects on the environment during the holidays is a change from previous years.  This awareness paired with trying to become more sustainable in a fun way, should make it a breeze. 

After recently watching, No Impact Man, he gave me the idea to buy locally grown food for the thanksgiving meal as well.  This way I know its fresh, local and one of the best ways to help have a more environmentally friendly Thanksgiving.  And lastly, I want this Thanksgiving to really have its original intent of being thankful for what I have.  This is going to be my biggest goal for thanksgiving to accomplish.  I want to encourage my family to talk about what they are thankful for and why.  I think this can be started by explaining why I want to do these different environmentally friendly holiday inclusions.  I hope my family isn’t too set in their ways with holiday traditions and will make room for new ones.

Tree Plantings Importance in Other Countries

After hearing you talk about Chief Jake Swamp and the tree planting ceremony, I wanted to learn more about why planting a tree was such a big occasion for different cultures.  The most interesting use for trees that I found was the people from the forests of India.  In their culture, trees have a special place in economic, cultural, healthcare, and especially in ceremonies. A number of tribes are known to exist in forests and forests are their sole livelihood as well.

 Both in rural and urban India, trees are worshiped in different forms. Many traditional ceremonies such as marriage, birth, death, and festivals are celebrated by either tree planting or by worshiping a tree. To give few examples, neem and pupil trees are planted during various occasions in every village, even people conduct marriages for these plants, which is known to bestow good times  to the village and families who live there. Marriages are performed under ‘the Ashwathakatta’ and pupil tree married together. The same exists in different forms in different parts of India. Tree planting on burial ground is another age old tradition, one that has many beneficial aspects for the environment.  These trees are planted with purpose and with the intent of saving and preserving them.

One of the first ways trees are used is in weddings.  In this tree ceremony, newly wedded couples plant native tree plants to mark their married life. These ceremonies are the important occasions, because over thousands of people from hundreds of villages have participated. In this culture people have chosen this type of tree planting ceremony as their way to register the marriage.

Tree planting ceremonies at funerals are also popular. Local people believe that after a person death, his body parts will decompose slowly and absorbed by tree roots. Then they worship the tree as a person by performing ritual pooja. They also believe that trees are the vehicle or messenger from earth to heaven and vice-versa. Different families select different tree species to plant for their loved ones.  Ceremonies like these bring people closer to nature and help the environment simultaneously.  I believe it would make significant improvements in our environment if we adapted some of these ceremonies in our society more regularly.

   

Where do the other phones and the Black Berrys go to Decompose?

After watching Terry Tempest William’s interview on campus, it made me want to learn more about e-waste, especially relevant to the use of cell phones.  From my research on the topic, I have realized that cell phones are giving computers and monitors some competition for the largest contributor to the world’s growing e-waste problem. It is becoming an extremely growing problem to have these toxic electronics clogging landfills and polluting our air and water supplies.

The average American gets a new cell phone every 18 to 24 months.  This is making old phones one of the largest toxic materials thrown out.  Many of these phones contain hazardous materials like lead, mercury, cadmium, flame retardants and arsenic.  According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Americans discard 125 million phones each year.  This means from cell phones alone, there is 65,000 tons of waste. I believe there needs to be more incentives available for people to keep their phones longer.

Luckily, like Terry Tempest Williams, there is a new breed of electronics recyclers that are stepping in to help.  Lee County has 731 tons of e-waste and there is no federal mandate to recycle electronics in Florida, but one place you can recycle your old cell phones is Call2Recycle.  It is a nonprofit organization that offers consumers and retailers in the United States and Canada simple ways to recycle old phones. Consumers can enter their zip code on the group’s website and be directed to a drop box in their area. Most major electronics retailers, like Best Buy also participate in programs that offer Call2Recycle drop-boxes in their stores. Call2Recycle recovers the phones and sells them back to manufacturers, which either refurbish and resell them or recycle their parts for use in making new products. This helps to reduce, reuse, and recycle; as well as properly disposing toxic chemicals.   

Neither the United States nor Canada currently mandates electronics recycling of any kind at the federal level, but a few states are getting into the act at their own initiative. California passed the first cell phone recycling law in North America. As of July 1, 2006, electronics retailers doing business there must have a cell phone recycling system in place in order to legally sell their products.  This is just a start to solving a problem that is in need of much attention.  We need more public policies on e-waste and consumers need to be more aware of e-waste.