Green Christmas Shopping

♫ I’ve been dreeeeeeeeeeaming of a greeeeeeeeeeen Christmas, just like the ones I used to know… ♫

Seriously though, this year I’ve been planning to try and find some cool, creative, ‘green’ gifts for some of the important people in my life (those who will appreciate such things). I’m sure by now some keeners are totally finished their Christmas shopping (Ugggghhh!), but the fact that I am even thinking about it this early is a miracle in itself. My feats of procrastination are legendary, although…I don’t think ANYONE could top my brother and sister-in-law - one year they literally (no-word-of-a-lie) bought their Christmas tree AFTER Christmas!

Ok, enough shenanigans - let’s get down to business. Since there are no ‘real’ green stores remotely near to where I live (not that I know of anyway), I’m going to go with the online route. The advantages of online shopping are many, especially in this day and age. Aside from the ridiculously wide selection of ’stuff’ you can now buy online, online shopping in and of itself is actually quite ‘green’. I don’t know about you, but during the holiday season I tend to take WAY too many trips to the mall, trying to find exactly the right gift. I absolutely HATE the mall! Apparently someone did a study once to test what sort of emotional stress mall-shopping caused for a group of men. They found that the stress associated with the mall was on-par with the stress-levels associated with fighting in a war. I’ve never fought in a war personally, but I can’t say I find the results all that surprising!

But I digress. Where was I anyway? Right - online shopping is ‘green’. Obviously sitting at home and doing all your window shopping and actual shopping via your computer is going to save not only stress, but potentially a lot of fuel and carbon emissions as well.

So whats the plan, Stan?

For the next week or so I’m going to be looking around trying to find really cool eco-stores for Christmas shopping and I will share any that seem to hold promise. I’ll get things started today with GreenFeet. I checked them out for the first time today (found them in my favourites folder) and they look quite cool! They seem to have a WIDE variety of products to chose from, and some really interesting stuff! According to the homepage they currently have a promotion running whereby you receive a free $20 gift when you spend $75 or more. Sounds pretty cool. Be sure to check them out if you are not familiar with them.

I think the only downside to online shopping I am going to encounter is that most of the really cool stores are more than likely going to be in the States. For the benefit of our Canadian readers (and myself) I’m going to see if I can find some good Canadian options as well.

As per usual we welcome any and all feedback anyone might have. Do YOU know of any nifty online green stores? Places you have already purchased gifts from perhaps? Share your reviews with us!

Technorati Tags: green gifts, eco gifts, christmas, green products, environment

Written by Bentley on November 28th, 2006 with 2 comments.
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