I just loved this environmentally flavoured Christmas greeting I received a couple days ago via email from Greg Holfeld (another Canadian illustrator living in Adelaide)… and had to share!

(Santa © Heather Castles, available royalty-free at ImageZoo.com)

Yippee, it’s almost Christmas! With less than a week to go till the big day, I was doing some last minute present wrapping and thought I’d post some greener alternatives to gift wrap.

• Matchboxes are a nice alternative to buying a money card at the shops… just fold your $$$ up and slip it into the cute little box, and tie it with a ribbon… easy to hang from the tree or slip in a stocking, and a bit more substantial to open than a card. I used odd scraps of wrapping paper and just glued them with a gluestick around the box slip. And because the little boxes just slip open, they can be reused year after year for small gifts like jewellery.

• Colorful fabric, old maps, scarves, or even that oh-so-colourful junk mail makes a great alternative to buying wrapping paper new.

• If you can’t find recycled wrapping paper, buy paper without the shiny & sparkly bits as that paper are not recyclable.

• Swap using tape to wrap your presents for reusable ribbons, twine or string.

• After all the present festivities are done, save wrapping paper and ribbons to reuse next Christmas, and recycle paper that is too ripped to reuse. Reuse holiday cards by trimming them down to gift-tag size and use them for next holiday.

• Cookie and coffee tins make great containers for gifts as well… just use a little paint stripper & steel wool to remove any of the printed exterior, leaving you with a rustic silver tin to pop presents in. And after the gift giving is done, use the tins to store christmas tree bobbles & decorations.

Whale’s Revenge is a great example another online game spreading a good message. The aim of Whales Revenge is to collect 1 million signature for their petition against . So check out the game, have a play, and sign the petition against whaling.

This is the statement that will accompany the petition: We the undersigned wish to show our support for an end to commercial whaling. We believe that the slaughter of whales for so-called ’scientific reasons’ is wrong. We wish to add our voices to the global campaign to protect these precious mammals from extinction. This petition will be sent to Greenpeace, The International Whaling Commission and the Australian Federal Government.

Another tasty tip from Ideal Bite for designers (and everyone else) to save energy… set your computer to go to sleep automatically when not in use, and schedule it to shut down at night. My mac is set to sleep after 10 minutes of not being in use… but (gasp) I’ve been a bit bad with remembering to shut down at night. Thanks to Ideal Bite I’ve discovered Mac has a has an Energy Saver mode in the Preferences where you can schedule shutdown… so now that it’s set up I don’t have to feel guilty for not remembering! Yeah Environment! And when I’m feeling especially like a green geek, I can check how much energy I save with the Mac Energy Calculator.
So not all designers work on Mac, right? Check out this post by Ideal Bite, they have a few more helpful links for you PCers out there!

Another great post by Ideal Bite this week… I’m always on the look out for green alternatives to my art supplies, and the team at Ideal Bite did all the hard work for me with sourcing a few brands of environmentally friendly recycled pens & pencils available online & in shops. So keep your eye out for ‘em next time you’re in the market!

• Woody Pen - refillable pens made from sustainable birch wood ($13).
• Triggerwood Pencil - biodegradable, and created from scraps of wood from a sustainably managed forest; uses Pilot BeGreen refills, below ($6).
• Pilot BeGreen Rexgrip Pencil - made from 100% recycled plastic; refills here ($2).
• Wheely’s Pen - ballpoints made from plastic and recycled tires; refills here ($1).

And here are a couple I stumbled across as well :

• Recycled Jeans Pencils - made from min 20% recycled denim ($6 / 12pk)
• Forest Choice Coloured Pencils - made from sustainably forested California Cedar ($3 /12 pk)

This tip courtesy of ideal bite :

Is your kid the next Picasso?

The Bite
Just maybe. Let your budding artiste make masterpieces with non-toxic supplies like veggie-based paint for art that screams like Munch, but smells like Monet’s garden.

The Benefits

• A safer family. Many standard art supplies emit asthma-inducing chems; pick ones that don’t contain ammonia, formaldehyde, or turpentine, especially since supplies can end up in kids’ mouths.
• Inspired kids. Whether or not your kid’s a natural, natural art supplies will get their creative juices flowing.
• A healthier world. 36 billion lbs of toxic acrylic polymer solvents, found in many traditional art supplies, are produced each year.

Wanna Try?

• Nuno Vegetable Paint - 12 colors made from plant and flower extracts ($22).
• Stockmar Modeling Beeswax - great alternative to polymer clay, which contains polyvinyl chloride ($14).
• Prang Soybean Crayons - 64 bright colors that don’t have a petroleum base ($6).
• Budget Art Kids Paint A Poster Books - veggie-pigment paint-by-numbers series with dinosaurs, sprites, and faeries ($5).
• Budget Art Materials - wide selection of non-toxic art supplies.
• Children’s Health Environmental Coalition - explains how to read the tricky labels on the backs of art supplies containers.

If you liked this article, you may also like Little Green Boys and Girls by Ideal Bite, which talks about children’s books that encourage kids to be aware and caring of the environment.

This is a great example of artists helping to bring environmental issues into the public eye. Cool Globes - Hot Ideas For a Cooler Planet is a public art show running from June to September 2007 in Chicago, where over 100 globes created by artists will be on display along the lakefront. You can see the globes up online, too… I loved this one by Kari Kaplan focuses on Sustainable Farming. Very cool.

Today is World Ocean Day! I just sent a letter to the Prime Minister asking that Canada live up to its commitments regarding the protection and sustainable management of our oceans. You can too, at: http://www.davidsuzuki.org/Oceans/Take_Action/Protect_our_oceans

The David Suzuki Foundation send me a newsletter about it… “World Ocean Day was created at the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Fifteen years later, Canada is struggling to meet its commitment to conserve our oceans’ vast biodiversity. With only 0.12 per cent of Canada’s oceans protected, there is a lot of work to do. And we need everyone’s help if Canada is going to conserve the health and majesty of our coastal and ocean environments for generations to come. (Read on …)

Good news for green designers… e-cycling couldn’t be easier now that Staples is accepting electronic items for e-cycling at ALL their US branches! KAPLA!!! So next time your cel phone, keyboard, mouse, motherboard, or monitor blitzes out… you can drop it off at your local Staples and they’ll e-cycle it for you! They also will take your empty ink & tonor catridges off your hands! Check it out… (Read on …)

I think this is a fabulous idea… Rizco Design has created a green report card, with which they hold themselves accountable for the resources they consume in creating their design products. I can imagine including a green report card like the Beleaf Report Card, as an extra page in a PDF quote as a pledge to the client to keep the project green, or even as an extra page in a PDF invoice as a “green receipt” to the client reporting on the projects low impact on the environment. … I’m inspired to make something similar myself! (I promise I’ll share the template once I’m done)