On Mondays, Michael explores the world of environmentalism and its intersection with queer culture in the column It’s Easy Being Green, despite what Kermit says.

Originally published on 9/21/2009

Image from mormonchic.com

My father celebrated a birthday recently, and when I started thinking about a gift, I started considering the environmental impact of gift-giving for the first time. (Writing this column has green on my mind, it seems.) After thinking about it for a while, a familiar expression came to mind: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle.

The most obviously green gift is giving a cash donation in the gift recipients honor or name. A quick financial transaction results in a needy do-gooding organization receiving much-needed funding, and most organizations will send a nice card to your gift recipient.

Last year for Christmas, all gifts to immediate family were donations in their names to the Washington Animal Rescue League (WARL). Recently, WARL rescued over 100 Dachshunds from a puppy mill in West Virginia. I grew up with wiener-dogs and everyone in our family loves them, so I thought this would be an appropriate way to reflect my family members’ canine affection and help a needy non-profit while preventing increased production of more junk that would eventually go into landfills. I doubt any one of my family members were disappointed by such a gift, considering they are well-off enough to get themselves anything they’d want. For my father’s birthday this year, I chose to make another donation to WARL.

It might not be obvious to everyone, but the in the phrase “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” the order of the words express a preference. The most preferable action is to reduce consumption. Sending a charity gift is one such way to reduce the impact of gift giving.

The idea of giving “reused” gifts might seem objectionable at first. However, many reused items have great value, such as antiques, baseball cards, vintage coins, or first edition books. Tapping into a gift recipient’s interests and finding a reused and collectible gift is a great way to reduce the environmental impact of gift giving. Many potentially valuable reused gifts are available on craigslist, ebay and freecycle.

Finally, if you have to give a gift that is a recently manufactured item, you can keep the environmental impact low by finding an item made from recycled materials. Some potential gifts hide their recycled nature, and others celebrate it. Examples of the first include a belt made from recycled auto tires and a necklace made from recycled paper. An example of the latter is a juice pouch totebag, currently available from Target or you can make one yourself.

You can top off a green gift with a reused gift bag or reused wrapping paper. Or heck, just wrap it in the comics section of the Sunday newspaper.

Green gifting seems to be in direct conflict with the current proliferation of “fancy, up-scale” stuff that is currently being foisted upon mainstream gay culture. Hopefully some people can begin to realize that doing more with less is better not only for the environment, but also for one’s bank account.

It’s pretty easy to give environmentally friendly gifts. You just need to think about it a little bit, and often have a bit of forethought. Keep this in mind now before the winter holiday season creeps up on you, and start planning green gifts now.