Last year, scientists at the Stockholm Environment Institute reported that the carbon footprint of Christmas – including food, travel, lighting, and gifts - was 650 kg per person in England. That is the equivalent of the weight of one thousand Christmas puddings for every resident of England. [newyorker.com]

A large contributing factor is the miles that food, gifts, decorations and other travel to reach you. Reduce the miles that these things travel, and your Christmas will be greener for it (although even this theory has its critics – read Green your diet, particularly the paragraph on 'miles in the balance'). Support local – locally made gifts, locally grown food, local wine, locally made decorations and travel that doesn't cost the earth, literally.

Green trees – the real versus fake debate
Last year we gave a list of reasons why a 'real' tree is better than a fake:

• Real trees are grown here, fake ones are shipped in from China
• Most artificial trees are made from metals and plastics
• Fake trees are not better for the environment [christmastree.org]
• Fake trees are not biodegradable
• Real trees are a little poor on biodiversity, but their product can be recycled

However, the Christmas Tree Association (can you believe there is such an organisation in America?) advocates that an environmental study

This is an updated version of our 2007 green guide.

If you’re one of many in Cape Town who recognise the value of buying organic and thus supporting sustainable, environment friendly farming then this is the guide for you.

In the UK stats released in March 2009 show that despite GDP falling by 1.9%, unemployment increasing by 1.3% and retail sales dropping by 1.8%, sales of organic food has continued to increase by 1.7%. In other words, the organic market is alive and well, and resiliant. [soil association]

In Sweden, the sale of organic food reached a record high in 2008 and now accounts for 3.4% of total sales. [swedishwire]

And US sales of organic food and nonfood products grew 17.1% over 2007 sales, despite tough economic times. [environmentalleader]

There are no statistics available for SA on organic sales. Infact we don't even have a national body that regulates the industry...

Eating for the sake of your body and the planet doesn’t mean giving up on the foods you love. It does mean becoming more actively aware of where your food comes from, how it’s produced and how its production affects the Earth.

Fundamental to greening your diet is eating ‘real’ food. Processed and refined foods are, let’s face it, not good for you. Most of them are produced as part of the push by marketers to ‘make your life easier’ but they’re usually laden with chemicals, additives, pesticides, and barely disguised GM derivatives.

Eat organic
We’re not banging on about anything new, but it really pays to buy

Treading lightly on the planet and minimising our impact on the world’s forests doesn’t have to end when it comes to what goes inside our homes. Whilst SA might lag behind Europe and the US when it comes to eco design, there are nonetheless still green alternatives available, if one just knows where to look.

How green is your exterior wood?
This green guide began as a venture to find eco-friendly doors to replace our wooden verandah doors. As the hunt got underway, we realised that our difficulty was not going to be finding the right price or the right company to replace our doors, but sustainable wood.

Recycling is the third component of the ‘reduce, reuse, recycle’ mantra – the “3R’s” of waste minimisation. Whilst this mantra has become commonplace, it is a cornerstone of saving our environment, and the recycling bit is the part we can easily get on top of.

Some experts have added “re-think” to the mix, questioning the entire manufacturing process and calling for a new approach. It’s also become fashionable for organisations to add their own R’s to the mantra, like replenish, renew, respect, responsible etc.

The obvious starting point however, is to reduce the amount we buy (we’ll have less to reuse and recycle), rather than avidly recycling. Finding constructive ways to reuse materials is next. Sorting and recycling is last.

But what is all the fuss about?

On paper, cans, glass & plastic:

• Recycling one aluminium can saves enough energy to run a TV for three hours

Everyone’s talking solar, which is no real surprise given the power crisis. It isn’t just a national crisis however but part of a far wider reaching global energy ‘over indulgence’ in dirty, non-renewable energy.

Whatever the reason for reading this – whether it’s that you want to take advantage of Eskom’s solar water heating incentive programme, or that you want to live a greener life - there is an urgent need to shift to renewable, non-polluting energy sources, like the sun, to provide our energy needs.

The difference between solar water heating and solar photovoltaics
Some people are confused when it comes to solar energy. They tend to lump solar in a hand basket and refer to it collectively as ‘solar power’. But there is a difference. Solar energy can be sourced as a form of

There is one place in which you really can make a start at ‘going green’ - your garden. If you’re still staring at an immaculate lawn with border beds kept in-check with regular cocktails of pesticides, weed killers and chemical fertilisers, it’s time to start thinking ‘out of the box’! Your garden could both feed you and become a tribute to living in harmony with all that surrounds it.

Using the principles of permaculture
Many green gardeners are adopting the principles of permaculture in their approach to gardening.

As its underlying premise, permaculture believes in benefitting life in all of its forms. It is the art and science of designing human beings’ place in the environment (rather than the place of the environment in the lives of human beings). Permaculture design teaches you to understand and mirror the patterns found in healthy natural environments.

Holidays are no longer only associated with gas-guzzling air miles and water-craving golf courses. Hop onto the web and there are now many overseas websites committed solely to green travel where responsible and sustainable holidays are fast becoming the norm.

wild olive farmMore and more travellers are choosing to holiday on organic and eco farms, and B&Bs or staying in fairtrade establishments, and paying to offset their air travel carbon emissions. These are the types of people who take their ethics with them and tend to recycle wherever they are and also shop local. They’re minimising the negative impact of their journey as much as possible.

What is a green stay?

In South Africa there is very little at the moment being done to legitimise the claims of establishments calling themselves ‘organic’ or ‘eco’. The term eco-tourism in particular has been bandied about by many a tour operator who is looking after anything but the environment

On the tip of every South African’s tongue is the question: what can we do? The electricity from our only supplier isn’t meeting our demands.

Grumbling about the error of Eskom’s ways is all very well, but waiting for "them" to come up with a solution, well... we could be left in the dark.

South Africa’s electricity comes almost exclusively from coal (read: massive contribution to Green House Gases, nasty to the environment, unsustainable in the long run). Over 90% of electricity is generated near the coalfields of Mpumalanga, around 5% from Koeberg’s Nuclear Power Station, and the remainder is from hydro electric / pumped storage and gas turbines which only operate at peak load times. There are plans to build a further two 4800 MW coal-fired power stations in Limpopo and Mpumalanga before 2015 [engineeringnews], and construct nuclear plants along the coastline to add about 20 000 MW of atomic energy capacity by 2025 (more about nuclear here).

It might be a tad wearisome to consistently read ‘don’t own a car’ as one of the major ways in which you can green the planet - and, let’s face it, more than a little unrealistic when it comes to South Africa - but we can start thinking about how we use our car, the type of car we drive, and how to make use of other forms of transport as alternatives to getting around.

Whilst the oil industry continues to fund climate change ‘denial’ [guardian] , so that we continue filling our cars with petrol in a clear dismissal of climate change, we have two things to consider. One, the petrol price will continue going up and up, together with the price of food [tralac] with a resultant drop in the popularity of big cars [stuff.co.nz], and two, carbon dioxide remains one of the major contributing factors to climate change.