SOMETHING happened earlier this year. The nature of the gifts I received my birthday, which coincided with the start of COP26, seemed different from those of previous years. My parents and brother for instance gave me a laundry eco-egg, which cleans clothes without harmful chemicals. My husband bought me a microfibre laundry bag called a Guppyfriend.
Each time I opened them I felt a sigh of relief. Often people were gifting answers to things that I was worrying about. Ah, I thought, the joys of green consumerism! Then I promptly made a mental list of a bunch of neat gadgets that I’d like to give and get for Christmas.
Top of the list, and stocking-filler friendly, are recyclable electric toothbrush heads. Then maybe, one of those foldy-up portable cups you can keep in your bag. And a flask like my swimming friend has, made from recycled ocean plastic. Then I had to remind myself that green gifting can also result in a bunch of eco-friendly clutter which I don’t use and also, along with all its embodied-carbon, potentially ends up in landfill. The key thing is that it’s not just any green gift, its one that works in someone’s life - and working that out even for oneself, let alone anyone else, can be a challenge.
READ MORE: How to have a Merry Christmas without wrecking the planet
While I’m a great believer in the fact that when it comes to the ecological crisis we are in the answer is system change and regulation, it also seems to me that once you’ve become a bit of an eco-worrier then that’s going to seep over into your consumer behaviour. And once that worry is there, the only option, apart from reducing consumption, is to shop greener - as well, of course, as vote and campaign for the bigger collective changes.
I find it hard not to feel a little haunted by the before and after life of everything that passes through your own life. The more you know about these other lives of our stuff, the more you worry. Christmas, with its riotous over-consumption, can feel like a time of multiple hauntings. The glow of getting together with those you love can have some of its sheen worn off by an awareness of the trail of waste you are leaving, the weep-worthy mountain of plastic packaging. Even if you wrap your presents in last year’s carefully removed paper, held together with paper tape rather than plastic tape, it’s still hard to avoid.
There’s also something about this Christmas coming so soon after COP26 that makes it seem extra haunted. Tis the season of consumer eco anxiety - though not, of course, for everyone. Turns out Black Friday this year was back with a bang, with UK spending back to pre-Covid levels, a fact made all the more depressing by research by Green Alliance which has shown that 80 percent of Black Friday purchases and associated plastic packaging ends up in landfill, incineration or low-quality recycling each year.
In the past I’ve often thought the answer was no gifts, or only second-hand gifts. But that’s just a little bit of a Grinch too far. After all, people are coming up with all kinds of ideas for useful ways in which they can either use old things, and upcycle them, or make products more recyclable or compostable. We also don’t only have to gift things. We can gift time, an experience, or even a skill or repair. A recent tip I heard is arranging for something that is valuable to a loved one to be fixed. .
But the consumer in me does also have a love for eco gadgets that are problem solvers. I like the fact that the Guppyfriend means I don’t have to chuck out all the family’s fleeces just because I’m worried about microfibres entering our waters. If you’re a cotton bud fanatic, you can get a reusable bud. For a bigger present, there’s a responsibly sourced phone from Fairphone, made so it can be easily taken apart and fixed. There are sunglasses from Waterhaul or plant pots from Ocean Plastic Pots made from recycled discarded ghost fishing gear. All these are signs we are shifting towards a more repair-oriented and circular economy.
A key challenge of green consumerism is the ever-increasing tsunami of greenwash. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try, do our research, look into the backstory, use a bit of common sense.
While I’m not an advocate for green consumerism - ie. the idea that everything will be solved by and the future belongs to a kind of consumer world very like the one we already have, only with much greener products - I do think faced with the kind of consumer society we live in, it at least allows us to choose to do less harm. And for me that feels better, less painful. It means Christmas feels less haunted - by the ghosts of carbon emissions, chemical pollutants or microplastics. While those gifts might not save the world, at least they won’t make me weep.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here