Buying Green Gifts Isn’t Just About Saving the Planet
Buying green gifts is really the way to go, especially these days when even governments are at least trying to be a little bit more planet-friendly (even though they’re the #2 polluter, China has thousands of government funded wind farms!) But saving the environment doesn’t have to, nor should it be, the only (or even primary) reason for buying green gifts. There are a host of other benefits of buying eco-friendly gifts that directly affect the lives of everyday people all over the world.
What do I mean? Consider green gifts that are manufactured from plantation-raised endangered species of wood. True, the earth does benefit because harvesters aren’t slashing and burning great swaths of tropical rainforests, however, how you considered the effect that these environmentally friendly gifts have had on the people who live in these regions?
These environmentally friendly gifts are manufactured from a sustainable resource. Sustainability requires reinvestment in the harvesting process, automation, and hiring or training workers who are skilled with more than just a chainsaw. In fact, environmentally friendly gifts of this nature bring jobs all the way up to the top of the manufacturing process from the truck drivers to the government agents in charge of inspection. Better jobs mean more money, less poverty, and more education and development.
But it’s not all about pre-consumer raw materials. In fact, many people-friendly businesses use post-consumer products now to compete in the global market. A hotbed of this type of development is in the north of India. In these tiny mountain villages, you can often find whole families engaged in the manufacture of textiles which use post-consumer products as raw material. From silk scraps, to cotton and hemp canvass, and even recycled plastics, these repurposed post-consumer products create twice as many jobs. How? Because people have to be employed to deconstruct the end products into a raw material and those materials are then fashioned into a new end product.
So when buying earth friendly products, don’t just think of the impact on natural resources. It’s true that the major interest in and emphasis on earth friendly products has been created by environmentalists, but if you help the environment, you help the people that live there too. So the next time you’re shopping for earth friendly gifts, remember that you’re doing your part to make the life of somebody on the other side of the world just a little bit better.
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