Monday, December 21, 2009

The green Christmas theme continues

When I worked as a reporter, when it got near the holidays everyone was required to write an "evergreen" story that could run between Christmas and New Year's when staffing was light and news was hard to come by, so pages could still be filled with content. The evergreen was so named because it was a story that could run at any time. This year, there's a new family of green features: stories about how to have a green Christmas. I liked this article in the Long Beach Press-Telegram, probably because it's my local paper. I now want to check out Bella Cosa Boutique, a Long Beach store mentioned in the article that sells items made from recycled materials, like cups made from discarded wine bottles and bowls made from melting down discarded glass. I like that it's not a store claiming to be environmentally friendly but still selling new items because even if something is made of bamboo or organic cotton, it's still using resources.

The article also talked about not using wrapping paper, which seems to be gaining popularity as our society becomes more conscious of the resources we're using. I've blogged about using used paper bags as wrapping paper. At my office Secret Santa gift exchange, we all used newspaper instead of wrapping paper. Laura even decorated her newspaper with holiday images cut out from a Trader Joe's paper bag (a girl after my own heart). She wrapped Mike's gift for him, taking tissue paper that had been in a gift we got from a student and twisting it so it served as ribbon. It was beautiful and rustic.

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