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How to Green Your Holidays

Christmas is upon us and with the joy and celebrations come the piles of torn wrapping paper, mounds of food waste, busted string lights,and other stresses that will make Mother Nature shout “Bah humbug!”. But it doesn’t have to be like that. It’s possible to celebrate Christmas without creating a trash pile for Santa’s elves.

  • Collect your coffee (and planner stickers) in a For Here mug or your own reusable tumbler. 

How many coffees do you need to buy to get a free planner? How many thousands of people want the same planner you do? Multiply the two and you have an idea how many paper cups are thrown in landfills just this Christmas season to get that free planner. But it doesn’t have to be this way!

Bring your own mug and save the planet. As a bonus, many coffee shops (both chain and independent) give you a discount for bringing your own mug. Chances are, by the time you collect enough stickers for that planner, you’d have saved enough from the cup discount to buy yourself a bonus coffee.

  • Unplug your Christmas lights before you go to sleep.

If you’ve had your Christmas lights installed since November 1st, you’re probably already feeling the monetary pinch from keeping them running all the time. Remember to unplug your lights before you go to sleep. Anyway, no one’s awake to appreciate them. If you can, invest in LED lights too. While they cost more in the beginning, they also last longer and are safer to use.

Christmas Spirit

  • Unplug appliances before you leave town.

Appliances left plugged in still use electricity – often called “phantom energy” – so unplug them when not in use, and especially when you’re about to leave on a long trip.

genius invention: why didn't I think of this?

  • Say no to food waste.

Food waste – whether it’s the waste from food preparation (think peelings) or waste from your plate – almost always also ends up in landfills. Once there, they decompose without air and produce methane.  Methane is an even worse greenhouse gas compared to carbon dioxide, trapping 28 to 36 times more heat compared to CO2.

Reduce food waste by planning properly so that there are no leftovers. If there are leftovers, give them away or eat them right away before they spoil.

Compost the food prep waste. If you have even a small garden, you can compost at home using the Bokashi method. If you need to compost food waste from a large party (your company party maybe?), consider hiring a composting service like Green Space.

The aftermath 3

  • Go for greener gifting.

Everybody loves gifts. We love getting them and we love giving them (to people we actually like). But to soften the blow to the environment and avoid all the messy post-unwrapping cleanup, consider:

  • Gifts that don’t need to be wrapped, like tickets to concerts or classes and store gift certificates. One of my friends gave me gift certificate for classes with Writer’s Block Philippines and it’s one of my favorite things ever.
  •  

  • Gifts that keep on giving, like donations to charity on behalf of your recipient
  • Buying gifts from environmentally and socially conscious SMEs. Buying locally made items from local companies supports more jobs and keeps the money inside our economy. Last year, I gave away bottles of tea concentrate from Bayani Brew. The tea leaves come from small Filipino farmers who are paid fairly, the price is right, and the tea itself is damned good. I’m also a big fan of SGD Coffee, who buys their beans directly from small farmers in Sagada,
  • Placing gifts in reusable gift bags. I save all the paper gift bags from the previous Christmas so I can reuse them for the next year. If you don’t like paper gift bags, maybe you can learn the art of furoshiki instead.

For this year’s gifts, I’ve gone for the following:

  • Bath and Home Care gift sets from Messy Bessy for the family titos and titas. Messy Bessy’s corporate gift guide, Christmas catalog, and regular catalog are available for download:

Messy Bessy Corporate Gift Guide 2018

Messy Bessy CATALOG 2018

They offer free shipping within Metro Manila for orders worth at least Php 5,000. If you’re getting items from the regular catalog, they offer 5% discount and free shipping for orders worth at least Php 5,000.

  • Baby-safe liquid laundry detergent from Messy Bessy for my brother and sister-in-law (and super cute niece)
  • Books from Adarna House and Tahanan Books for my inaanaks. Support local authors and publishers!
  • Homemade goodies for my friends and cousins. Yes, they are my (unwilling) test subjects for my baking.

 Merry Christmas everyone!

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PHOTOS: Fire on the beach

After welcoming the new year with fireworks, our guides and their supervisor decided to pull out all the stops and do a firedancing routine on the boardwalk. They were originally supposed to do in on platforms in the water but the Engineering guys decided to ignore their advice and installed the platforms too far away from the shore. Full moon + high tide = submerged platforms *facepalm* So the guides had to move their routine to the boardwalk. They were still great 🙂

Happy New Year!
Happy New Year! (Taken without a tripod. Oh yeah.)

Spitting fire
Spitting fire

From front to back: Gading, Eileen, Oliver, and Dodong
From front to back: Gading, Eileen, Oliver, Dodong, and Mark

05 firedancers03 Macy

06 firedancers04 Macy

More circles
More circles

This is Eileen. She's the supervisor of these crazy people literally playing with fire
This is Eileen. She’s the supervisor of these crazy people literally playing with fire

09 firedancers Macy
I want to learn how to do crazy shit like this.

10 firedancers El Nido Macy

 

This was only my second time photographing firedancers. The first one was at my cousin’s wedding. Luckily I had a tripod this time and was able to set up before the show started.

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My long absence and Christmas Eve on the island

My long absence from this blog is due to my graduate thesis. It’s all my thesis’ fault! I took 2.5 months off work so that I could work on it full-time in Manila. Unfortunately, those 2.5 months were not enough as my adviser had me do more analysis work to get the results we wanted. Even more unfortunately, I really had to go back to work this December (before Christmas!) because I work for a resort and Christmas-New Year’s is our busiest time of the year. Good luck if I can finish my thesis now.

Anyway, here are some photos from our little island celebration. These photos are the result of weeks to months of prep work, including turning our conference room into Santa’s workshop. This post is all about the finished product. I’ll post the behind-the-scenes photos afterwards 🙂

The belen (Nativity scene) made by the guides. Simple but effective.
The belen (Nativity scene) made by the guides. Simple but effective.

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Six steps for a sustainable Valentine’s Day

Author’s note: I originally wrote this article for our corporate blog but I couldn’t include links to other companies. To remedy that (and also to point people in the right direction), I’m posting the original article with the links to specific service providers here in the Philippines. Hope this helps!
The day of hearts is upon us again and thousands of Filipinos (and their sweethearts) will be joining in the Valentine’s Day festivities. Chocolate, flowers, and cards will fly off the shelves in the frenzy of gift-giving, while tables at the trendiest restaurants will be booked way in advance. But in the haze caused by the heady romance in the air and the hustle and bustle of finding the perfect gift for your sweetie, we tend to forget to show some love for our mother too – Mother Earth. With only a little time and creativity, you can buy or create beautiful gifts that your significant other and the environment will thank you for.

1. Got something to say? Say it with a handmade card made of recycled materials.

Nothing says “I love you” and “I appreciate you” better than a card made with love, and the Earth will love you too if it’s made of recycled materials. If you’re not the crafty type, shops also sell cards made of recycled paper.

Merry Valentine's Day! PC
Cheesy yet effective. And Earth-friendly too!

2. Sweeten the deal with locally-made chocolate.

Give chocolate with a Filipino twist. Theo & Philo sells chocolate made with cacao beans from Davao and sugar from Bacolod, with varieties like Barako (milk chocolate with organic barako coffee), Labuyo (dark chocolate with chili), and Green Mango & Salt (dark chocolate with dried green mangoes and salt). My friend Rima vouches for the deliciousness of their dark chocolate.

organic spring flowers3. Flatter with organic flowers.

Did you know that 196 million roses were sold in the United States for Valentine’s Day 2011? It’s the #1 holiday for florists, catching 40% of holiday dollar volume. Unfortunately, most of those roses were imported from South America and grown on farms that use fertilizers and pesticides extensively. Filipinos have it easier as most Philippine florists already grow their flowers locally, usually in Baguio, Tagaytay, or Mindanao. To take it another step further, choose locally and organically grown flowers.

4. Give stuffed animals with more heart.

Consider giving stuffed animals that do more than gather dust on a shelf. By symbolically adopting a giant panda or dolphin plush toy, you help WWF-Philippines raise awareness for endangered animals and habitat conservation, conduct dolphin stranding workshops, and buy dolphin rescue kits. Each adopted animal comes with a customized adoption certificate and species information card.

5. Cooking is caring.Sunday Cooking-6

For a more personal and healthier touch, how about staying in and cooking an organic meal together? It’s more quality time together as a couple, you avoid the (worse than usual) traffic that’s sure to surface on this day, and it’s good for your body and the environment. Perhaps you might even have those locally-made chocolates for dessert!

6. Spend a day outside. 
This can tie in with #5. Cook your organic food early, pack a basket, and picnic in a nature park or other protected area. Your park entrance fees go towards the protection and maintenance of the park and their environmental education initiatives. Both the Ninoy Aquino Parks and Wildlife Center and the La Mesa Ecopark are within Metro Manila and are easily accessible. Other possibilities are the Hundred Islands National Park in Pangasinan and Apo Reef Natural Park in Mindoro Occidental. For the ultimate and Earth-loving romantic getaway, consider a luxury green hotel within the El Nido-Taytay Managed Resource Protected Area. Activities like snorkeling, diving, windsurfing, kayaking, birdwatching, and hiking maximize your enjoyment of nature’s wonders while minimizing your environmental impact. Their partner airline also offers a carbon offset program, where a minimum donation buys six seedlings that will be planted and taken care of in your name in the Brgy. Villa Libertad watershed area.

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Welcoming the new year, island-style

Working in the tourism industry, you eventually accept that you’ll never be able to spend the holidays with your family and friends and learn to make the best of it by celebrating with your co-workers and guests. From a certain point of view, your co-workers and guests become your “family” of sorts.

Some photos from our New Year’s celebration on the island. May you all have an exciting and meaningful 2012 🙂

Stars of Miniloc
December 31, 2011, just before the fireworks

Fireworks 1
The pretty lights reflecting off the water.

The rest of the photos are over here 🙂 Happy New Year!

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My wishes to you for 2012

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2d0QIt1EOGo]

Out of all the things that this man has ever written (and there are A LOT!), this has to be one of my favorites.

Happy New Year everyone!