Replacing gifts with donations

A donation instead of flowers at a funeral is common but I had never heard of someone saying at Christmas to skip the gift and instead give to a charity. Until this year, when I know 3 people who have done it and many more considering it especially once their children are older. And a few clever charities are promoting the idea as well. Its great. Its better than great. And surely this concept will only increase as people do worry about consumption. Plus people acknowledge they own everything they really want.

But then the doubts; the products will still be made and on shelves for sale, even if one person does not receive a gift? Personal consumption levels is actually not about giving a donation to a charity of choice; just as ‘offseting’ carbon produced by saving someone’s forest that you should not even destroy in the first place is not really a positive.

Climate change needs to be made personal. I wish I could do it. I wish we all could reduce consumption in a way that worked; but what would that look like?

I don’t do it, but I wish everything I bought was truly environmentally friendly. I looked at all my purchases of this past month, after reading of an artist who has made clever art out of her consumption over past 5 years; http://www.obsessiveconsumption.typepad.com

Sure I buy the enviro’ friendly washing detergent and I recycle containers and look for items with minimal food packaging. But …..

I try to imagine a world without the purple coloured writing pens I adore. Or the fun coloured manila folders or the glitter pen or the notebook with fabulous arty 3D effect picture on it, to name just a few minor items I bought in this month. All these things and more have chemicals in them. And all could be stopped so that the manufacturing of basic plain environmentally friendly items for the same tasks, was possible.

Demand will always be there. Thus a stationery factory filled with synthetic chemicals to make all these items will always exist. Or will it?

How can we change demand?

Can I just turn off the wish to buy the 50cent notebook with green spiral bound plastic doover over it? I should I know. I should do better. Yet it seems so futile because my not buying one or two items is not going to stop the factory right now. How to get critical mass? And what about the job losses, if production did reduce? Unemployment is already a critical issue in developing countries as well as so called modern societies … would enviro’ consumption mean further hardship for individuals out of work ….??

Eventually next generations I guess, will be attending addiction meetings for those who still crave for colourful pens; after the globe is destroyed because we all loved our colours in all our items we buy, whether minor or substantial purchases
Yet it pleases me that someone has taken a stand and asked for no gift. Its all about the individual gestures. And in a group setting having a donation to a charity of choice instead of a gift is a profound statement, to all who are there.

Now about my purple pens, what is the environmentally sound decision for me to make and can I do it?

For more clever art go to:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kateconsumption/sets/72157622729694162/
                                   - 14 new pens, wonder if they were coloured….

Unconditional bonsai love?

Failure as a guardian is the strongest feeling, mixed with guilt at selfishness and also curiosity about green ethics? Can I throw away the bonsai now that I don’t like it? Or should it have every equal opportunity to live? And live with me, the person who initially adopted it and loved it unconditionally?
While away for 6 weeks my work-mates in the crowded work space ignored the bonsai. By all accounts it was very close to dead. So it was whisked away from them by another more observant work colleague and placed downstairs where it was daily placed outside, by a third and very diligent colleague, so as to receive sunshine and likely lots of rain as well. The plant has flourished!
Really flourished! It’s now a mass of green fronds and tilts extremely to one angle as the starved death throes of a plant, eagerly sought the sun. It now looks to me like a fluffy misshapen ball of green with no elegance or sophistication. Alive yes, irrefutably. But no longer a bonsai. On my return it was proudly given back and sits on my desk as a large green blob. Clearly the Cambodian staff member who happily adopted it didn’t know of the bonsai concept or maybe the plant was so naked and unhappy it was impossible to even see the shaping that it had had. So the plant has been saved. While the bonsai has not been saved.
Bonsai is all about shaping the natural tree but placing it in a restrictive environment. Branches are stripped from the main trunk and remaining branches are made into a specific shape. Not a good attitude to have to the tree, is it? The concept of bonsai in Cambodia is rough and ready even by gardeners, as the concept is vaguely adapted by Cambodian gardeners who saw the idea come here with Chinese gardeners. Yet my original bonsai was charming despite it only being worth US$2, bought at a nursery near the work office. There is a logic in my Cambodian colleagues not being aware of the pruning that would have been required to maintain the bonsai.
Now the dilemma is do I put up with the misshapen small shrubbery on my desk that no longer relates to the concept of a bonsai? Or do I live in a materialistic culture where I ditch it by giving it away and go and buy another plant more to my liking. Probably not a new bonsai as the concept now bothers me; especially as I am selfishly rejecting the new non-restricted bonsai even more, than the original highly styled little plant, did already slightly bother my ethics.

Almost but not quite killed, the bonsai!

Introducing some plants into the office for greenery was spontaneous idea one Friday afternoon. $8 later a bonsai a foot high in simple green oval pot, a single stem variegated leafy plant and a shrub were added to a shared office room. As a new staff member the action was treated with distrust by colleagues; what was the meaning of my action? No one else had been so outrageous as to add their own plants!

Within weeks confetti of small dark leaves scattered around my computer. The bonsai was seriously unhappy! This well established, distinguished decoration out of living matter is struggling. A nude dry bonsai is no joke. No one can take the bonsai in, without wondering what the ….?, as almost all its wealth of greenery swirls in the fan’s breeze. Three remaining upper branches with leaves sat above spindly naked arms. Should I take it home into a cooler, airy environment? Clearly its unhappy in its new environment. What to do? Exit humbly or wait and see what happens. The distress had stopped two thirds along the bonsai or yet to die? Cruelty to the human spirit, to watch that shock of new environment onto the bonsai, that was already loved by so many in its short-term addition to the space.

A few more weeks later light green scatters over the lower branches. A miracle of growth! Seemingly arriving all at once after a weekend of its quiet without humans, the tiny sprouts indicate new life. The bonsai has rallied its spirit! Slowly slowly those shoots develop into small leaves. A different dilemma emerges, as the bonsai gains in confidence, the human need to constrain and consign some of those shoots to death; all in the name of keeping the bonsai in the elegant style previously created. Snipping some of the green shoots away so as to keep the shape, does no harm thankfully.

Joining a new space and creating a way to grow into the new environment can almost kill! Yet the wait for acclimatizing is worth it. The partial breaking of spirit, of almost giving up on settling in is on public display as also is the gaining of some equilibrium and tentatively setting forth with one’s own new green shoots of ideas; some shoots will be nipped away immediately all in the name of maintaining harmony while others will be allowed to flourish, contributing to the overall effect.