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Pumpkin soup and DIY fake blood: how to be more sustainable this Halloween

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Wednesday, October 30, 2024

Halloween is just around the corner, with millions of children gearing up to put on their favorite costumes and flock to the streets for trick-or-treating. Spooky skeletons and glowing jack-o’-lanterns are adorning homes that have gone all out to celebrate a night of fright. But the truly scariest part of the holiday might just be the plastic waste left behind after the festivities end.The environmental footprint of Halloween is staggering.A 2019 study out of the UK found that 83% of materials used for Halloween costumes are made from non-recyclable plastic. “They’re basically destined for a landfill near you,” said Lexy Silverstein, sustainable fashion advocate. This year, US shoppers are anticipated to spend more than $11bn on candy, decorations, costumes, parties and pumpkins. Here are some ways to celebrate Halloween more sustainably.1. Shop your closet or a thrift storeWhen buying any piece of clothing, it can be worth asking yourself: how many times am I going to wear this item? Where am I going to wear it? And what am I going to wear it with?These questions are harder to answer when it comes to buying a single-use Halloween costume that’s unlikely to be reworn another time. According to the Fashion Transparency Index, there are enough clothes in the world to dress the next six generations of people. Try finding a costume at a thrift store, and look out for clothes that you can rewear next Halloween or for regular occasions.“I really challenge everyone this year to shop your own closet,” said Silverstein. For example, a regular white button-up shirt can be used for a multitude of costumes such as the titular character of movie classic Risky Business. A striped shirt, bobble hat and round glasses are all the components you need for a Where’s Waldo costume. And working with colors you already own in your closet, such as all green or head-to-toe pink, can go with a multitude of iconic characters such as Barbie and Glinda.2. DIY or borrowSome of the most memorable Halloween costumes can be the ones created with your own hands, whether it’s cardboard butterfly wings or a jellyfish made out of an umbrella and some scrap materials. For parents of ever-growing children, making a simple cape can work for a princess, a superhero and a magician, among others. The best part: capes can be adjustable so they won’t grow out of them as quickly, lasting them several Halloweens.Hosting a costume swap is another way to minimize buying single-use outfits. Is there a costume your friend wore that one time that you’re dying to recreate? You can ask to borrow it or swap for one of yours.“Last year, my friend went as Padme and Anakin with her partner, and this year I’m going as Padme and Anakin with my partner,” said Silverstein. “I’m just repurposing her costume from last year and part of my costume is rented.”3. Try recreating a look with face makeupA lot of mass-produced costumes found in UK stores are made with thin synthetic materials such as nylon. They may be cheap but they are also highly flammable. In the UK, Halloween costumes are classified as toys and are not required to be flame-resistant or flame-retardant, meaning they can potentially catch fire if exposed to an open flame, and can be hard to extinguish quickly. This very thing happened to the daughter of television presenter Claudia Winkleman in 2014. A recent assessment out of the UK of costumes for children under seven has found that more than 80% of tested costumes have failed basic safety tests for flammability and strangulation from cords.In the US, thanks to the Flammable Fabrics Act, costumes sold at retail stores are required to be flame-resistant, but it doesn’t mean that the costume can’t burn, and it doesn’t solve all issues related to concerns about toxic chemicals found in Halloween costumes. Vinyl face masks can potentially expose people to heavy metals and ones made with flexible plastic are highly likely to contain phthalates.Opting to recreate the mask through face-painting may seem like a better alternative, but many conventional face paints can contain lead, arsenic and mercury. Experts recommend using regular drugstore makeup and cosmetic-grade face paint, as they have stricter regulations.And if you really want to know what goes into the products applied to your face, why not try some items found in kitchen cabinets? You can make fake blood from corn syrup, beet juice and cocoa powder.4. Ditch the cobwebsIt might be tempting to deck your front yard or stoop with fake spiderwebs this season. But these cotton-like cobwebs can be a death trap for wildlife. They’re often placed in trees and bushes and on windowsills, where birds and other small animals can get trapped in them, risking injury or death. Instead, window displays with a light-up LED web or a crocheted cobweb can be a safer and a more long-lasting alternative that can be reused in future decorations.“Every time I see a fake spiderweb drawn onto a window that is thrilling to me, because it looks great, it celebrates the holiday spirit, but it also eliminates a threat to birds, which is window collisions,” said Dustin Partridge, director of conservation and science at New York City Bird Alliance. Millions of birds die each year due to window collisions, many of them during migration, which is happening right now. “Painted spiderwebs or stickers can block out a reflective window and that can actually save birds.”5. Turn pumpkins into soupEach year, the US harvests about 2bn lbs of pumpkins to sell whole. One of the ways to utilize it for purposes beyond decor is using the flesh for soup and roasting up the seeds.It might be tempting to make your carved pumpkin stand out by spraying it with hairspray or glitter, but that can limit the ways it can be repurposed once festivities end. “Avoid spraying down your pumpkins and find a good use for them afterward,” said Partridge.After the celebrations are over, you might be wondering what to do with all the jack-o’-lanterns decking the halls of Halloween’s past. One satisfying way is to smash them up and compost them. Some zoos and farmers even accept them as feed for animals.“So much of the concern of consumption is put on the consumer, but really the onus is on these corporations capitalizing on these holidays,” said Katrina Caspelich, chief marketing officer for Remake, a non-profit advocating against fast fashion. “They really just need to create less stuff. How many Halloween costumes do we need?”Remember that it’s not all on you. Trying to reduce the footprint of this holiday can be hard when companies constantly churn out these single-use products. Halloween candy is one of the largest contributors to plastic waste.“[We’re] focused on developing packaging that adheres to the highest standards for food safety while also being fully recyclable, compostable or reusable in order to reduce the environmental footprint of confectionery packaging,” said Carly Schildhaus of the National Confectioners Association. “There’s also a role for federal, state and local governments to play in repairing and advancing the nation’s broken recycling infrastructure, which cannot yet fully address flexible packaging.”Some candy companies have been distributing collection bags to recycle the candy wrappers to turn into dog poo bags. But that only addresses a small part of the greater plastic problem from this holiday.

The environmental footprint of this holiday is frightening – here are ways to celebrate responsibly and still have funHalloween is just around the corner, with millions of children gearing up to put on their favorite costumes and flock to the streets for trick-or-treating. Spooky skeletons and glowing jack-o’-lanterns are adorning homes that have gone all out to celebrate a night of fright. But the truly scariest part of the holiday might just be the plastic waste left behind after the festivities end.The environmental footprint of Halloween is staggering. Continue reading...

Halloween is just around the corner, with millions of children gearing up to put on their favorite costumes and flock to the streets for trick-or-treating. Spooky skeletons and glowing jack-o’-lanterns are adorning homes that have gone all out to celebrate a night of fright. But the truly scariest part of the holiday might just be the plastic waste left behind after the festivities end.

The environmental footprint of Halloween is staggering.

A 2019 study out of the UK found that 83% of materials used for Halloween costumes are made from non-recyclable plastic. “They’re basically destined for a landfill near you,” said Lexy Silverstein, sustainable fashion advocate. This year, US shoppers are anticipated to spend more than $11bn on candy, decorations, costumes, parties and pumpkins. Here are some ways to celebrate Halloween more sustainably.


  1. 1. Shop your closet or a thrift store

    When buying any piece of clothing, it can be worth asking yourself: how many times am I going to wear this item? Where am I going to wear it? And what am I going to wear it with?

    These questions are harder to answer when it comes to buying a single-use Halloween costume that’s unlikely to be reworn another time. According to the Fashion Transparency Index, there are enough clothes in the world to dress the next six generations of people. Try finding a costume at a thrift store, and look out for clothes that you can rewear next Halloween or for regular occasions.

    “I really challenge everyone this year to shop your own closet,” said Silverstein. For example, a regular white button-up shirt can be used for a multitude of costumes such as the titular character of movie classic Risky Business. A striped shirt, bobble hat and round glasses are all the components you need for a Where’s Waldo costume. And working with colors you already own in your closet, such as all green or head-to-toe pink, can go with a multitude of iconic characters such as Barbie and Glinda.


  2. 2. DIY or borrow

    Some of the most memorable Halloween costumes can be the ones created with your own hands, whether it’s cardboard butterfly wings or a jellyfish made out of an umbrella and some scrap materials. For parents of ever-growing children, making a simple cape can work for a princess, a superhero and a magician, among others. The best part: capes can be adjustable so they won’t grow out of them as quickly, lasting them several Halloweens.

    Hosting a costume swap is another way to minimize buying single-use outfits. Is there a costume your friend wore that one time that you’re dying to recreate? You can ask to borrow it or swap for one of yours.

    “Last year, my friend went as Padme and Anakin with her partner, and this year I’m going as Padme and Anakin with my partner,” said Silverstein. “I’m just repurposing her costume from last year and part of my costume is rented.”


  3. 3. Try recreating a look with face makeup

    A lot of mass-produced costumes found in UK stores are made with thin synthetic materials such as nylon. They may be cheap but they are also highly flammable. In the UK, Halloween costumes are classified as toys and are not required to be flame-resistant or flame-retardant, meaning they can potentially catch fire if exposed to an open flame, and can be hard to extinguish quickly. This very thing happened to the daughter of television presenter Claudia Winkleman in 2014. A recent assessment out of the UK of costumes for children under seven has found that more than 80% of tested costumes have failed basic safety tests for flammability and strangulation from cords.

    In the US, thanks to the Flammable Fabrics Act, costumes sold at retail stores are required to be flame-resistant, but it doesn’t mean that the costume can’t burn, and it doesn’t solve all issues related to concerns about toxic chemicals found in Halloween costumes. Vinyl face masks can potentially expose people to heavy metals and ones made with flexible plastic are highly likely to contain phthalates.

    Opting to recreate the mask through face-painting may seem like a better alternative, but many conventional face paints can contain lead, arsenic and mercury. Experts recommend using regular drugstore makeup and cosmetic-grade face paint, as they have stricter regulations.

    And if you really want to know what goes into the products applied to your face, why not try some items found in kitchen cabinets? You can make fake blood from corn syrup, beet juice and cocoa powder.


  4. 4. Ditch the cobwebs

    It might be tempting to deck your front yard or stoop with fake spiderwebs this season. But these cotton-like cobwebs can be a death trap for wildlife. They’re often placed in trees and bushes and on windowsills, where birds and other small animals can get trapped in them, risking injury or death. Instead, window displays with a light-up LED web or a crocheted cobweb can be a safer and a more long-lasting alternative that can be reused in future decorations.

    “Every time I see a fake spiderweb drawn onto a window that is thrilling to me, because it looks great, it celebrates the holiday spirit, but it also eliminates a threat to birds, which is window collisions,” said Dustin Partridge, director of conservation and science at New York City Bird Alliance. Millions of birds die each year due to window collisions, many of them during migration, which is happening right now. “Painted spiderwebs or stickers can block out a reflective window and that can actually save birds.”


  5. 5. Turn pumpkins into soup

    Each year, the US harvests about 2bn lbs of pumpkins to sell whole. One of the ways to utilize it for purposes beyond decor is using the flesh for soup and roasting up the seeds.

    It might be tempting to make your carved pumpkin stand out by spraying it with hairspray or glitter, but that can limit the ways it can be repurposed once festivities end. “Avoid spraying down your pumpkins and find a good use for them afterward,” said Partridge.

    After the celebrations are over, you might be wondering what to do with all the jack-o’-lanterns decking the halls of Halloween’s past. One satisfying way is to smash them up and compost them. Some zoos and farmers even accept them as feed for animals.


“So much of the concern of consumption is put on the consumer, but really the onus is on these corporations capitalizing on these holidays,” said Katrina Caspelich, chief marketing officer for Remake, a non-profit advocating against fast fashion. “They really just need to create less stuff. How many Halloween costumes do we need?”

Remember that it’s not all on you. Trying to reduce the footprint of this holiday can be hard when companies constantly churn out these single-use products. Halloween candy is one of the largest contributors to plastic waste.

“[We’re] focused on developing packaging that adheres to the highest standards for food safety while also being fully recyclable, compostable or reusable in order to reduce the environmental footprint of confectionery packaging,” said Carly Schildhaus of the National Confectioners Association. “There’s also a role for federal, state and local governments to play in repairing and advancing the nation’s broken recycling infrastructure, which cannot yet fully address flexible packaging.”

Some candy companies have been distributing collection bags to recycle the candy wrappers to turn into dog poo bags. But that only addresses a small part of the greater plastic problem from this holiday.

Read the full story here.
Photos courtesy of

Eat Less Beef. Eat More Ostrich?

Ostrich is touted as a more sustainable red meat that tastes just like beef.

A few months ago, I found myself in an unexpected conversation with a woman whose husband raises cattle in Missouri. She, however, had recently raised and butchered an ostrich for meat. It’s more sustainable, she told me. Sure, I nodded along, beef is singularly terrible for the planet. And ostrich is a red meat, she added. “I don’t taste any difference between it and beef.” Really? Now I was intrigued, if skeptical—which is, long story short, how my family ended up eating ostrich at this year’s Christmas dinner.I eat meat, including beef, and I enjoy indulging in a holiday prime rib, but I also feel somewhat conflicted about it. Beef is far worse for the environment than virtually any other protein; pound for pound, it is responsible for more than twice the greenhouse-gas emissions of pork, nearly four times those of chicken, and more than 13 times those of beans. This discrepancy is largely biological: Cows require a lot of land, and they are ruminants, whose digestive systems rely on microbes that produce huge quantities of the potent greenhouse gas methane. A single cow can belch out 220 pounds of methane a year.The unique awfulness of beef’s climate impact has inspired a cottage industry of takes imploring Americans to consider other proteins in its stead: chicken, fish, pork, beans. These alternatives all have their own drawbacks. When it comes to animal welfare, for example, hundreds of chickens or fish would have to be slaughtered to feed as many people as one cow. Meanwhile, pigs are especially intelligent, and conventional means of farming them are especially cruel. And beans, I’m sorry, simply are not as delicious.So, ostrich? At first glance, ostrich didn’t seem the most climate-friendly option (beans), the most ethical (beans again), or the tastiest (pork, in my personal opinion). But could ostrich be good enough in all of these categories, an acceptable if surprising solution to Americans’ love of too much red meat? At the very least, I wondered if ostrich might be deserving of more attention than we give to it right now, which is approximately zero.You probably won’t be shocked to hear that the literature on ostrich meat’s climate impact is rather thin. Still, in South Africa, “the world leader in the production of ostriches,” government economists in 2020 released a report suggesting that greenhouse-gas emissions from ostrich meat were just slightly higher than chicken’s—so, much, much less than beef’s. And in Switzerland, biologists who put ostriches in respiratory chambers confirmed their methane emissions to be on par with those of nonruminant mammals such as pigs—so, again, much, much less than cows’.But Marcus Clauss, an author of the latter study, who specializes in the digestive physiology of animals at the University of Zurich, cautioned me against focusing exclusively on methane. Methane is a particularly potent greenhouse gas, but it is just one of several. Carbon dioxide is the other big contributor to global warming, and a complete assessment of ostrich meat’s greenhouse-gas footprint needs to include the carbon dioxide released by every input, including the fertilizer, pesticides, and soil additives that went into growing ostrich feed.This is where the comparisons get more complicated. Cattle—even corn-fed ones—tend to spend much of their life on pasture eating grass, which leads to a lot of methane burps, but growing that grass is not carbon intensive. In contrast, chicken feed is made up of corn and soybeans, whose fertilizer, pesticides, and soil additives all rack up carbon-dioxide emissions. Ostrich feed appears similar, containing alfalfa, wheat, and soybeans. The climate impact of an animal’s feed are important contributions in its total greenhouse-gas emissions, says Ermias Kebreab, an animal scientist at  UC Davis who has extensively studied livestock emissions. He hasn’t calculated ostrich emissions specifically—few researchers have—but the more I looked into the emissions associated with ostrich feed, the murkier the story became.Two other ostrich studies, from northwest Spain and from a province in western Iran, indeed found feed to be a major factor in the meat’s climate impact. But these reports also contradicted others: In Spain, for instance, the global-warming potential from ostrich meat was found to be higher than that of beef or pork—but beef was also essentially no worse than pork.“Really, none of the [studies] on ostrich look credible to me. They all give odd numbers,” says Joseph Poore, the director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Food Sustainability, which runs the HESTIA platform aimed at standardizing environmental-impact data from food. “Maybe this is something we will do with HESTIA soon,” Poore continued in his email, “but we are not there yet …” (His ellipses suggested to me that ostrich might not be a top priority.)The truth is, greenhouse-gas emissions from food are sensitive to the exact mode of production, which vary country to country, region to region, and even farm to farm. And any analysis is only as good as the quality of the data that go into it. I couldn’t find any peer-reviewed studies of American farms raising the ostrich meat I could actually buy. Ultimately, my journey down the rabbit hole of ostrich emissions convinced me that parsing the relative virtues of different types of meat might be beside the point. “Just eat whatever meat you want but cut back to 20 percent,” suggests Brian Kateman, a co-founder of the Reducetarian Foundation, which advocates eating, well, less meat. (Other activists, of course, are more absolutist.) Still, “eat less meat” is an adage easier to say than to implement. The challenge, Clauss said, is, “any measure that you would instigate to make meat rarer will make it more of a status symbol than it already is.”I thought about his words over Christmas dinner, the kind of celebration that many Americans feel is incomplete without a fancy roast. By then, I had, out of curiosity, ordered an ostrich filet (billed as tasting like a lean steak) and an ostrich wing (like a beef rib), which I persuaded my in-laws to put on the table. At more than $25 a pound for the filet, the bird cost as much as a prime cut of beef.Ostrich has none of the strong or gamey flavors that people can find off-putting, but it is quite lean. I pan-seared the filet with a generous pat of butter, garlic, and thyme. The rosy interior and caramelized crust did perfectly resemble steak. But perhaps because I did not taste the ostrich blind—apologies to the scientific method—I found the flavor still redolent of poultry, if richer and meatier. Not bad, but not exactly beefy. “I wouldn’t think it’s beef,” concluded my brother-in-law, who had been persuaded to smoke the ostrich wing alongside his usual Christmas prime rib. The wing reminded me most of a Renaissance Fair turkey leg; a leftover sandwich I fixed up the next day, though, would have passed as a perfectly acceptable brisket sandwich.I wouldn’t mind having ostrich again, but the price puts it out of reach for weeknight meals, when I can easily be eating beans anyways. At Christmas, I expect my in-laws will stick with the prime rib, streaked through as it is with warm fat and nostalgia.

Electric fields could mine rare earth metals with less harm

Smartphones, electric vehicles and wind turbines rely on environmentally destructive rare earth mining operations. Harnessing electric fields could make this mining more sustainable

Mining for rare earth metals comes with environmental consequencesJoe Buglewicz/Bloomberg via Getty Images Rare earth elements used in smartphones and electric vehicles could be extracted from the ground more sustainably using electric fields. Today, most rare earth metals used in electronics are mined by using toxic chemicals to extract the elements from mineral ore. During the mining process, thousands of tonnes of chemical waste are released, which can pollute nearby groundwater and soil. But concentrating those elements together using electric charges could drastically cut the amount of environmentally damaging chemicals needed. “Imagine a crowd being guided through a maze by directional lights – similarly, rare earth elements are driven from the ore by the electric field toward specific collection points,” says Jianxi Zhu at the Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry in China. “This controlled movement ensures efficient mining with minimal environmental disruption.” Zhu and his colleagues created flexible, sheet-like plastic electrodes – each 10 centimetres wide with customisable lengths – made from non-metallic materials that can conduct electricity. At a rare earth deposit in southern China, they inserted 176 electrodes into individual holes drilled 22 metres into the rock. Next, they injected ammonium sulphate, a type of inorganic salt, into the ore to dissolve and separate out the rare earth elements as charged ions. They then activated the electrodes to create an electric field between positively and negatively charged electrodes. That electric field moved the rare earth elements toward the positively charged electrodes, concentrating them together. The elements could then be transferred to treatment ponds for additional purification and separation processes. The approach enabled the researchers to greatly reduce the amount of harmful chemicals used in extracting the rare earth elements, slashing the related ammonia emissions by 95 per cent. That could help prevent much of the water and soil contamination that today’s rare earth mining operations produce. This electric field process also proved 95 per cent efficient in extracting rare earth elements from 5000 tonnes of ore, whereas chemical processes alone usually achieve just 40 to 60 per cent efficiency, says Zhu. But the new mining method would also raise electricity costs for rare earth mining operations – and increased electricity consumption could mean more carbon emissions. The researchers have already shown how to reduce electricity costs by powering just one-third of the electrodes at any given time. Access to renewable power and improvements in electrode technology could also help bring down the energy demands and emissions of the mining process, says Zhu. This technology has potential to be a sustainable solution in the near future, says Amin Mirkouei at the University of Idaho. But he warned that it faces practical challenges, including the energy costs of the method and the long time – 60 days – it requires to ramp up to 95 per cent efficiency.

Environmentally harmful Christmas gifts to avoid

Our obsession with consumption and plastic is not sustainable.

It’s fun to indulge in the nostalgia of snowy Norman Rockwell Christmas scenes filled with wholesome candle-lit family joy. The happy faces in the famous paintings appear thankful and content with whatever gift they received—be it a wooden spinning top, a pair of shoes, or a bicycle. You can almost imagine a local carpenter or factory making the gifts a town or two over rather than a far-away plastic toy factory in China. Those days of sustainable, locally hand-carved furniture, wooden toys, quality clothing, homemade blankets, and quilts that could be passed down through generations seem mostly long gone. Instead, what lies beneath the warm and merry veil of today’s Christmases is an obsession with consumption that drives human and environmental tragedy. “Many people in the global north tend to think that it is their right and that it is normal to consume the amount that we consume today,” Vivian Frick, a sustainability researcher at the Institute for Ecological Economy Research in Germany, told Popular Science. “They often completely forget that the consumption level that we have depends on exploiting other countries, having cheap resources from other countries, and having cheap labor.”While burning fossil fuels for energy and transport contributes to 75% of global greenhouse gas emissions, reducing it requires systemic change at the international level to make a real, lasting difference. Although it doesn’t seem like it, given the lack of climate action at the COP29 climate conference in November, it’s far easier for 195 countries to agree on climate-friendly policy than to ask 8 billion people to carpool or stop eating cheeseburgers. That said, our personal choices can still make a difference. While some may be unable to stop driving or air-conditioning their homes–since we live in an industrialized society where fossil fuel consumption is a mostly fixed part of the current system — we can help by consuming less in our day-to-day lives. That can be as simple as being more mindful about what you gift friends and family for Christmas. Dirty SantaAlmost every Christmas gift affects the environment and humans in some way. Whether it’s a cheap single-use plastic product or metals mined using child or slave labor, it has likely caused a lot of suffering and pollution on its long manufacturing journey from the ground to your hands. For example, over 90% of children’s toys sold in the U.S. are made from plastics derived from crude oil—the same stuff that fossil fuel companies pump from the ground to keep your car running and economies ticking over. More than 80% of those toys are manufactured in China. After fossil fuel companies extract the crude oil from the ground, it travels thousands of miles via pipelines or oil tankers to a refinery. Once there, the oil is processed into materials called feedstocks and moved to petrochemical plants, where they are converted into plastic resins or pellets. Then they go to the factories to create almost everything in your home, wardrobe, and, honestly, life. Anything made in China has to be transported at least 7,200 miles across the Pacific Ocean. The effort is staggering. For example, parents report that children lose interest in new toys within hours. Most toys are forgotten within a month, and over 80% of plastic toys end up in landfills, according to a May 2022 study in the Journal of Sustainable Production and Consumption.The problem doesn’t stop there. About 70% of all clothing is made from crude oil-derived synthetics like polyester, nylon, and acrylic and manufactured in China, Vietnam, India, and other developing countries. This system is known as fast fashion. The clothing is made quickly and cheaply to keep up with the latest trends. It’s known to fall apart quickly.Around 11 million tons of clothing end up in U.S. landfills every year. The same applies to furniture and electronics. But this culture of unsustainable consumption didn’t start recently. Society’s transition from wanting very little to wanting everything began decades ago. Scientific advances during World War II led to our love-hate relationship with mass-produced plastic and our current throwaway culture. It began to take hold in the late 1940s, just as Americans entered an era free from war and economic depression. Families had more disposable income and time to watch the latest, humanity-altering invention: the television. Oh, and the baby boom. All combined, it created a new consumer market and an easy way to reach them. The U.S. toy industry’s sales skyrocketed from $84 million in 1940 to $900 million by 1953. Last year, toy sales hit $40 billion. Today, refined crude oil is used in many products: clothes, soaps, toothpaste, toilet seats, bedsheets, water pipes, food preservatives, and even aspirin. If you’re not sleeping in, wearing, sitting on, drinking, or eating a type of refined crude oil, you’re probably not reading this. Maybe you’re living in a cave. But it’s not just toys or fast fashion that make Christmas gifts unsustainable. Here are some of the most common and surprising gifts you should avoid.ElectronicsModern electronics, like smartphones and tablets, often require frequent upgrades, leading to significant e-waste. Producing these devices relies on mining rare earth minerals, which damages ecosystems, consumes massive amounts of energy, and harms local communities. Even when recycling programs exist, only a fraction of electronic components are recovered, increasing waste.Single-use beauty gift setsPre-packaged beauty sets are a popular holiday gift but often include non-recyclable plastic containers and unnecessary wrapping. Excessive packaging adds to landfill waste, and the single-use nature of products—like small lotions or disposable accessories—means they are quickly used and discarded. Opt for sustainable alternatives with minimal packaging.Subscription boxes with excess packagingWhile convenient, monthly subscription boxes generate significant waste. Each shipment typically includes single-use plastics, bubble wrap, or foam fillers, much of which cannot be recycled. The repetitive deliveries contribute to carbon emissions from shipping, and the short lifespan of box contents often adds to household clutter and waste.Candles with paraffin waxParaffin wax candles are made from petroleum byproducts, meaning they are unsustainable and release harmful toxins like benzene and toluene when burned. These emissions contribute to indoor air pollution. More sustainable alternatives, like soy or beeswax candles, burn cleaner, last longer, and have a lower environmental impact.Synthetic perfumes or fragrancesSynthetic perfumes rely heavily on petrochemicals derived from non-renewable resources like crude oil. The production process consumes high energy and generates chemical waste. Additionally, synthetic fragrance chemicals are often not biodegradable, contributing to long-term pollution when washed away or released into the environment.Mass-produced jewelryMass-produced jewelry frequently relies on unsustainable mining practices to source metals and stones. This process causes deforestation, soil erosion, and water contamination. Ethical concerns, such as poor working conditions and conflict materials, further complicate its impact. Choosing recycled metals or sustainably sourced alternatives reduces environmental harm.Chocolate from unsustainable sourcesUnsustainably sourced chocolate contributes to deforestation, as forests are cleared for cocoa plantations. Producing chocolate often involves unethical labor practices. Chocolate also uses unsustainable palm oil, harming habitats and wildlife. Opt for fair-trade or sustainably certified chocolate to minimize environmental and ethical harm.Bonus: these ain’t great either.Glitter-covered items – Microplastics that pollute waterways.Plastic-based beauty products – Microbeads also pollute our waters.Gadgets with non-recyclable batteries – Leads to e-waste.Pod coffee machines – Pods are hard to recycle effectively.Gas-powered tools – Emit greenhouse gases and harmful particulates.Gift cards to unsustainable chains – Supports factory farming and deforestation.Exotic pets – Harms wild ecosystems through poaching.Frequent flyer miles – Encourages carbon-intensive air travel.

Book Review: This Relationship Shaped Rachel Carson’s Environmental Ethos

The connection between queer love and the power to imagine a more sustainable future

December 17, 20244 min readBook Review: This Relationship Shaped Rachel Carson’s Environmental EthosThe connection between queer love and the power to imagine a more sustainable futureBy Brooke BorelNONFICTIONRachel Carson and the Power of Queer Loveby Lida Maxwell.Stanford University Press, 2025 ($25)On a summer night in the mid-1950s, two women lay side by side on Dogfish Head, a spit of land on Maine’s jagged coast where a river meets the ocean. They took in the dazzling stars, the smudged filaments of the Milky Way, the occasional flash of a meteor. One woman was Rachel Carson, who would become well known for her book Silent Spring and its galvanization of the modern environmental movement; the other, Dorothy Freeman, was Carson’s mar­­ried neighbor. The two had been drawn together from the moment they met in 1953 on Southport Island, Maine, and remained close until 1964, when Carson died of cancer. It was Freeman who scattered Carson’s ashes.On supporting science journalismIf you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today.The scene on Dogfish Head may sound romantic, and Lida Maxwell’s new book, Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love, argues that it indeed was. Maxwell, a professor of political science and of women, gender and sexuality studies at Boston University, explores the intimate bond between Carson and Freeman by drawing, in part, from a trove of personal letters. The book’s message is that the relationship holds a lesson for our modern climate crisis, especially for those of us willing to find meaning outside our culture’s dominant narratives.The correspondence is telling. Carson professes strong feelings after just a few letters (“Because I love you! Now I could go on and tell you some of the reasons why I do, but that would take quite a while, and I think the simple fact covers everything …”). The two call each other “darling” and “sweetheart.” During the stretches they spend physically apart, they express what can easily be read as queer yearning, as when Freeman writes: “How I would love to curl up beside you on a sofa in the study with a fire to gaze into and just talk on and on.”There is also reference to the hundreds of letters we’ll never read because the two women burned them, perhaps in that same fireplace. As Martha Freeman, Dorothy’s granddaughter, told Maxwell, “Rachel and Dorothy were initially cautious about the romantic tone and terminology of their correspondence.”Was Carson a lesbian? The answer has long been the source of speculation. It’s impossible to know; she’s not known to have publicly identified as such. To Maxwell, though, this question is beside the point: “Whether or not their love was ‘homosexual,’ to use the language of the time, it was certainly queer. It drew them out of conventional forms of marriage and family and allowed them to find happiness where their society told them they weren’t supposed to: in loving each other and the world of non­­human nature.”Queer love is a rejection of what Maxwell calls “the ideology of straight love,” or the pursuit of “the good life” through marriage, buying and decorating a house, having and raising children, and participating in the treadmill of consumer culture to keep it all running. Because Carson and Freeman’s love was queer, Maxwell argues, they had no template with which to explore it. Instead they created a new language, expressed through a shared love of nature: the song of the veery, the Maine tide pools, the woods between their houses. This avenue for connection and meaning making, Maxwell argues, is what made Carson’s Silent Spring possible—it changed her from a writer who captured the wonder of nature to one advocating to save it.How does this apply to the climate crisis? “As perhaps is obvious,” Maxwell writes, “the tight connection of the ideology of straight love with consumption is also bad for our climate because it ties our intimate happiness to unsustainable ways of living.” To truly achieve meaningful climate policy, she continues, we’ll need to expand our “visceral imaginary of what a good life could be.” The queer version embraces a “vibrant multispecies world” where we seek “desire and pleasure outside of the ideologies of capitalism and straight love.” These specific points, made through­out the book, are at times repetitive and can feel didactic.Some readers, particularly straight readers, may bristle at all this. After all, plenty of people who don’t identify as queer opt out of consumerism and fight climate change. Straight people can reject the hetero­normative story; queer people are not immune to it. But the point of the book isn’t that we should take individual action—it’s about broader structures and narratives. As a queer woman who spent a decade in a hetero­normative marriage, I know how seductive the call of that particular “good life” can be; I also know the liberation of building something new. Max well’s book holds lessons for all readers about ac­­knowledging, and then escaping, the structures that ensnare us.Carson and Freeman found the way through their decidedly queer, deeply romantic, long-­lasting love. Even when they were apart, they imagined themselves together. As Freeman writes during one of these spells: “You and I have been walking on the Head in the moonlight. Do you remember the night we lay there in that lovely light? I told you you looked like alabaster. You did. How happy we were then.”

New Zealand Inks 'Sustainable' Trade Deal With Switzerland, Costa Rica and Iceland

SYDNEY (Reuters) - New Zealand signed a trade deal on Saturday with Switzerland, Costa Rica and Iceland to remove tariffs on hundreds of...

SYDNEY (Reuters) - New Zealand signed a trade deal on Saturday with Switzerland, Costa Rica and Iceland to remove tariffs on hundreds of sustainable goods and services, in a move Wellington says will boost the country's export sector.The Agreement on Climate Change, Trade and Sustainability (ACCTS) was signed at a ceremony during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in Peru on Saturday after being struck in July, Trade and Agriculture Minister Todd McClay said in a statement."This agreement removes tariffs on key exports including 45 wood and wool products — two sectors that are vital to achieving our goal of doubling New Zealand's exports by value in 10 years," McClay said."It will also reduce costs for consumers, removing tariffs on hundreds of other products, including insulation materials, recycled paper, and energy-saving products such as LED lamps and rechargeable batteries."The deal prioritised New Zealand's "sustainable exports", he said, amid a roll back by the country's centre-right government of environmental reforms in a bid to boost a flailing economy. Exports make up nearly a quarter of New Zealand's economy.(Reporting by Sam McKeith in Sydney; Editing by Sandra Maler)Copyright 2024 Thomson Reuters.Photos You Should See - Sept. 2024

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