Last Minute Green Gift Ideas

Christmas is coming up! Here are some ideas of gifts to get for the green-friendly folk in your midst.

Conventional shower heads use up 100 L of water per shower. A low flow shower head can reduce water consumption by up to half. Not only will water consumption decrease, but energy consumption used to heat the hot water for the shower will also decrease. This gift not only saves the environment, it also saves money! How can you go wrong? An Inconvenient Truth

The Al Gore movie comes out on DVD on December 10, just in time for Christmas. If your gift recipient is really an environmentalist, there's a good chance he's already watched it. But on those cold winter days, when the last thing on anybody's mind is global warming, there's nothing like an Al Gore call to arms to motivate and mobilize the green geek.

What could be more organic and sustainable than growing your own food, in your own backyard? Maybe include a vegetable gardening how-to book, to get them started. Plenty of green geeks'

secret dream is to have a bountiful garden, but they don't have the time and energy to get it going. Help them out! Tomatoes, potatoes, cucumber, peppers, lettuce, radishes, coriander, sqaush....I'm getting hungry just thinking about it. Home grown stuff tastes better too.

This book is a must-read for anyone who cares about the environment. Although it's a few years old now, it's still very relevant. The book promotes a vegan diet for four main

reasons: health, compassion, impact of diet on the environment, and genetic engineering. All are important, but the most relevant to environmentalists might be the third reason, impact of diet on the environment. According to Robbins, eating half a pound of beef requires as much water input as half a year of daily showers! That's some pretty serious waste.

The benefits of biking over driving are numerous. Their commute to work or school will become a workout. They can ignore rush hour traffic. And it'll wake them up in the morning. Who needs a cup of coffee when they can get the blood pumping with a hard core workout? But the real environmental reason, of course, is that it'll get them out of the car. If your green friend already has a bike, there are plenty of other options. A messenger bag, a sleek biking jersey, or a Camelbak are just a few examples of gifts that your biking friends would appreciate.

If you're looking for clothes for the fashion conscious green friend, try to avoid child labor produced clothing.

Instead, www.clothesmadefromscrap.com sells t-shirts, sweatshirts, tote bags, and baseball caps made from recycled plastic bottles. Choose from a variety of designs, including one that says "Made from recycled soda bottles". Now that's a fashion statement and then some.

A great gift idea is a donation for a worthy cause.

There's no limit of worthy causes out there. For example, at www.tenthousandvillages.ca you can change a family's life with livestock. $29 Canadian will give a family a goat, a sheep, a pig, or 18 rabbits. With the livestock, the family gets access various resources, such as wool, milk, fertilizer, and food. They can use it themselves, or sell it in the village for money to buy other necessities.

Good luck with your gift-giving, and remember to make this Christmas a green one.