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Did you know you can go solar with your holiday lights? December brings us the gifts of Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, and many other festivals and parties, large and small, secular and religious. However you celebrate, our Editor Jim Miller shares his Top Ten Tips for Greener Holidays.

Quick Links

Skip scrolling! Here's what you'll find in today's Bluedot San Diego Newsletter:

• Ways to Go Greener This Holiday Season

• Royal Kudos for San Diego Zoo Scientist

• Propagate a Plant and Gift It

• Let’s Settle This: Real Tree or Fake Tree?

• Green Gift Guides for Women, Men, Kids, and Stocking Stuffers

• Dried Flower Art

• A Gluten-Free, Vegan, Ginger-Spiced Pear Upside-Down Cake 

• Homemade (Sugar- and Dairy-Free) Dark Chocolate

• A Cinderella Story for Unwanted Fruit

• DIY Citrus Sugar or Lemon Sugar Scrub

Featured Stories

San Diego and Cameroon’s Ebo forest are roughly 8,300 miles apart, but share a major connection: Ekwoge Abwe, a principal scientist for the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, whose lifetime of dedication to wildlife in his home country was honored by the British conservation group Tusk. The esteemed researcher received an award from Prince William himself at a ceremony in London (a mere 5,500 miles distant). Closer to home (in fact about 100 feet from ours), garden guru Laura McLean shares tips on sharing your houseplants through propagation.

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Dear Dot: What's the Greenest Christmas Tree?

Dear Dot, 

I know the old fake Christmas trees are awful, made of petroleum products and the souls of children. But what about the new fakes, made of recycled plastic bottles? They’re good, right?

– Max

Dear Max,

Live trees sequester carbon (yay) until they’re cut down (boo) but they’re often replaced by another one (yay) but, being smaller, sequester less carbon (boo). If you go live, purchase from a local vendor. Christmas trees are best thought of as seasonal crops: They are grown, then harvested, then replanted, then harvested. 

Most fake trees are indeed created from PVC (boo), though some are made of PE (slightly less boo), come from China which means fuel for transport (boo), and often are the product of poorly paid workers in unsafe working conditions (boo). However, they can last many years (yay). When it comes time to dispose of them, they are difficult to recycle (boo). 

You note the advent of “green” fakes, made from recycled plastic (yay). But producing anything, even of recycled materials, requires the use of fossil fuels (boo). So, while a tree that makes use of recycled materials is better than one that doesn’t, it’s still not a win. …

Read the rest of Dot’s answer.

Got a question for Dot? Write her atdeardot@bluedotliving.com.

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BUY LESS/BUY BETTER: Holiday Gift Guides

The San Diego newsletter and The Bluedot Marketplace includes affiliate links. 

If you purchase a product through one of our links, we may earn a small digital finder’s fee. 

These commissions help us fund the valuable journalism that you see on Bluedot. 

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:

• The Lomi composter, which will help you reduce methane emissions and trash volume 

• Birkenstocks, now available in fuzzy and even shiny materials 

• Pela case, the compostable cell phone case that comes in tons of cool styles

• Vacation’s “leisure-enhancing” sunscreen … because suncare should be a year-round priority 

• Fabulous waterless shampoo, conditioner, and lotion from Ethique 

• Comfortable, easy-to-wear clothes from Toad&Co

• Timeless, chic wardrobe staples from Eileen Fisher

San Diego Nature Watch

BLUEDOT KITCHEN

Since the holiday season provides ample opportunities for making (and gifting!) food, we thought we’d share a couple of very healthy recipes for sweets — neither involves refined sugar — from Bluedot’s own Cleo Carney. She isn’t just a great recipe developer, she’s a high school student participating in our sister nonprofit Bluedot Institute, which amplifies the environmental efforts and stories of youth. (If you like planet-friendly recipes, sign up for the upcoming Bluedot Kitchen newsletter here.)

A Cinderella Story for Ugly Fruit

Here are a couple of recipes for citrus sugar and a body scrub.

For more Bluedot Climate Quick Tips, click here.

Remembering Norman Lear

Norman Lear, legendary producer of many beloved television series such as “All in the Family” (and friend of Bluedot Living), died this week at 101. This spring, Bluedot reporter Lily Olsen had the great good luck of visiting Mr. Lear and his wife, film producer Lyn Lear, at their home in Beverly Hills. The Lears had been environmentalists for decades, encouraging their Hollywood colleagues and studio heads to use their platforms to speak out about environmental issues and to include climate change storylines in shows. With another industry couple, they founded the Environmental Media Association in 1989, with the goal of using media to alert people to the perils of harmful environmental practices. We hope you’ll read the story that ran on our Los Angeles site, perhaps while recalling a favorite Lear-produced TV show. Rest in peace, Mr. Lear. And thank you.

Feeling Festive or Restive?

There’s something perverse about a celebratory season that has its own mental illness: Holiday Depression and Stress. This results, according to experts, from unrealistic expectations, over-commercialization, financial stress, grief, and loneliness, among other things. Super.

There are solutions, and they mostly boil down to: Don’t buy into it. Don’t buy into the commercialization, the idea that you can BUY happiness. Don’t put pressure on yourself to be perfect. And don’t forget to connect. If you can’t connect with family or friends, connect with nature or volunteering. We’re particularly fond of our annual Christmas morning hike. Festivities at our house tend to start in the afternoon, so the day starts with us out in the hills taking in the quiet, mundane wonders of the Earth we care about so much. Always helps get our heads on straight.

However you celebrate the season, we hope you rejoice in the positive changes we’re all making for a cleaner and greener planet all year. We’ll be back in two weeks.

–Nicki and Jim Miller
Editors, Bluedot Living San Diego
sdeditor@bluedotliving.com

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