“I have friends I gather with every Christmas. We used to give gifts, but it got unwieldy, and we just stopped. Instead, we make time for each other.”Â
–Bluedot Living editor Jim Miller reminding us what the holiday season is really about: spending quality time with friends and family. Before you finish your holiday shopping or finalize your party plans, read his 10 tips for greener holidays. Our favorite? Instead of buying plastic plates, glasses and silverware for a party, hit a thrift store, buy some gently used place settings, use them at your gathering, and donate them back later.Â
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Welcome to Bluedot Los Angeles! Every other Sunday, we share stories about local changemakers, sustainable homes and yards, the nature all around us along with planet-friendly recipes, and advice from Dear Dot. Please email us with story ideas at laeditor@bluedotliving.com. Together, we can make a difference for the blue dot we call home.
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SIMPLE / SMART / SUSTAINABLE /Â STORIES
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Our gardens provide us with so many joys: fragrant wisteria vines in the spring, fresh tomatoes in the summertime, brightly colored camellias in the fall. During the winter holiday season, they can become a great source for gift-giving. Bluedot Living gardening columnist Laura McLean suggests eight holiday gifts garnered from the garden, from dried homegrown herbs for your favorite foodie to a collection of succulent cuttings for your neighbor, or dried-flower art for the grandparents. “Gift-giving doesn’t have to be expensive or negatively impact our Earth,” McLean says. “At the core, it is about spreading joy, kindness, and
love, and our gardens are the perfect place to start our gift search.”
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Quick Links
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Skip scrolling! Here’s what you’ll find in today’s Bluedot Los Angeles Newsletter:
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A 2021 California Department of Fish and Wildlife report found that over half of wild animals in California tested positive for rodenticide exposure. What’s more, according to the American Association of Poison Control
Centers, anticoagulant rodenticides were involved in 3,000 cases of human poisonings in 2021. That’s why a new California law banning diphacinone, a highly toxic rat
poison, is such good news. Model, actor, screenwriter and director Rachel Ward faced down some bad news – Australia’s “Black Summer” in 2020-21, when wildfires raced through the eastern part of the country – with a determination to become part of the solution. In her new film “Rachel’s Farm,” she tells the story of how she transitioned her 800-acre farm in New South Wales to regenerative practices, healing the land while also making it highly productive.
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Advertisement
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There are thousands of nonprofits tackling climate change. Giving Green recommends 6.
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This holiday season, make your giving count. At Giving Green, our team of researchers spent 3,000 hours this year finding top climate change charities where your donations can have an outsized impact. We look for timely giving opportunities that have huge potential impact, but are relatively neglected by traditional climate funding. We’ve done the research, so you don’t have to.Â
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| 2023 Top Climate Nonprofits |
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Dear Dot: Where Should I Buy a House?
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–Illustration by Elissa Turnbull
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Dear Dot,Â
I’m a realtor who’s curious about how climate change is going to impact where people will want to live. What are some climate change concerns people should be considering before committing to a next home/next location?
–Karen
Dear Karen,
When Mr. Dot and I were betrothed, we purchased a cottage on one of the Great Lakes. It was perched high above a thin strip of sand that sloped gently to the lake and faced west, allowing us to enjoy one of the top ten (reportedly by National Geographic) most beautiful sunsets in the world. But what Mr. Dot and I learned fairly quickly was that, some summers, our beach was vast, offering plenty of space for cottage crowds and beach volleyball. Other summers, our beach shrunk, sometimes vanishing entirely, waves lapping at the foot of the wooden staircase that wound down the cliff from our cottage. It was those years that Mr. Dot and I wondered if our investment was likely to vanish, too.
Put another way: Climate change is coming for all of us and we’d be wise to consider how best to plan for those impacts.
So Dot took your question to Jim Miller, a Bluedot editor and economist, who’s studied both climate change and housing economics.
Read the rest of
Dot’s answer.Â
Got a question for Dot? Write her at deardot@bluedotliving.com.
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         Paid Advertisement
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BUY LESS/BUY BETTER:Â
Bluedot’s Sustainable Gift Guides
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The Bluedot Marketplace includes affiliate links. If you purchase a product through one of our links, we may earn a commission, essentially a small digital finder’s fee. These commissions help us fund the valuable journalism that you see on Bluedot. Thank you for supporting us!Â
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As gifting season kicks into full gear, we’re happy to share Bluedot’s Sustainable Gift Guides: we’ve got gifts for women, gifts for men, gifts for teens, gifts for kids and babies, as well as a list of sustainable stocking stuffers and gifts for hosts. If you don’t feel like scrolling, we’ll just direct you toward a small sampling of the items our readers purchased most this year:
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I Need a Hero
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When it comes to making ecologically sound decisions for your household, it can be hard to find solid, reliable source of information. But maybe we don’t need that one single hero, Notes From the Home Front columnist Krista Halverson posits. Maybe we can find the advice we need by watching the actions of people we admire. “Short of having a personal sustainability coach who knows all the right answers,” she says, “I’ll take another kind of hero—the kind who cares and does things that show it.”
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Bluedot Kitchen:Â Good Snacks
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During the busy holiday season, it’s always a good idea to have a few nutrient-dense, easily portable snacks in the kitchen. Whip up a batch of these vegan energy bites or muffins to grab when you’re on the go. They’re even great for breakfast.
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Robin Jones is a Southern California native who served as an editor at Westways magazine for more than a decade. She currently lives in Long Beach and teaches journalism at Cal State Long
Beach, where she advises the award-winning student magazine, DIG MAG. She loves road-tripping across California, especially when the itinerary includes stops in Arcata and Trinidad.
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