Green and Grin Holidays
The most exciting time of the year is over. I shopped and dropped, as everyone did for gifts to give to my loved ones and friends. I must admit though that as i did my gift list, never did it occur to me to consider buying earth-friendly gifts. Guilty! To lessen my guilt, I have the next 11 months to think carefully what gifts to buy. Aren’t those bags made from recycled tetra packs lovely? Or those interesting trays made from old newspaper?
But somehow, my guilt diminished a bit when I thought about the actions we took to reduce waste during the holidays. We know that tons of plastic bags end up in landfills each year. Modesty aside, long before a big department store launched its “Green Bag” project, we have been carrying reusable shopping bags every time we shop. In cases where the use of plastic bags cannot be avoided especially when buying in wet markets, what we do is wash those bags, sort them according to size and give them to our “suki” in “talipapa”. Aling Piling was just to happy to reuse those plastic bags after the holidays. It meant saving some amount from buying new plastic bags.
Saving on water also lessened my guilt. Cleaning up after the holidays is tiring with the many relatives and friends we had entertained. We require much more water than ordinary days because we prepare food and wash dished more often so we tend to keep the faucet flowing a lot. For every minute that water runs, more than two gallons of water is used. To reduce water usage and water bill we did simple steps : scrape the dished clean before rinsing them with water, fill a basin with soapy water, scrub the dishes, rinse them all together in another basin filled with water. These steps, according to an uncle from Nawasa, will save up to ten gallons of water.
Turn the green holidays to grin holidays. ( Why green? Don’t you forget that a Christmas tree is green. Usually, that is!. And why grin? Think of your contribution to save Mother Earth!)
