Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Under the Christmas tree good practises handbooks


by Silvia Musso

Are you too struggling with Christmas? It would be for the crisis or for the worries for future austere times, but this year you can find useful suggestions everywhere “to celebrate” in a sustainable way. Many more or less big, more or less known associations and organizations as well as municipalities or firms are listing decalogues of good practises that with zero Km dinner, green gifts and environmental friendly decorations will help us to overcome also this Christmas. Greenpeace suggests for the Christmas tree to use prunes, instead of buying a real one, to buy low consume lights, to use less meat for the dinner and about the fish to avoid cod, prawns, tuna and swordfish choosing bluefish.

Always about the menĂ¹ a reflection and a anti-waste vademecum comes from Andid, the association of Italian dietists. «Since always – president of Andid, Giovanna Cecchetto, explains – Christams times are the occasion to share refined dishes where food becomes the symbol of abundance, pleasure, thoughlessness, hope of a fuure well-being. But differently from now, those food were used to last also after Christmas and were sipped during the following weeks with the “recycle” practise. Today it is not like this any more. We throw away all».

According some data collected by United Nations, in fact, every year one third of food producted on Earth, about 1,3 billions tons, is wasted. To contain and avoid these wastes Andid dietits have listed 10 suggestions. Among them: “Do not get hungry at the dinner time”; “to respect satiety signs”; “to avoid bread”; to buy a correct quantity of food, proportioned with the numbers of people”; do not being groped by sales and to limit too big food supplies”.

Coldiretti's suggestion, over the invitation to choose zero Km food, is about the Christma tree. It is better to opt for the real fir because often the plastic ones come from China and have done thousands of km with many greenhouse gases emissions. Moreover the firm can be replanted after the festivity, or disposed in les time than the plastic one tht needs 200 years befor the complete degrade. In Italy the firs' cultivation to be allocated to Christmas market is part of hydrogeological risk prevention projects.

About the holydays, finally, WWF, in its yearly decalogue, suggests to prefere Italy rather to far destinations and the train rather than areoplane.

Other decalogues, very similar ones to the others, come also from websites of municipalities, businnesses and reviews.

The ideas to spend a sustainable Christmas are many, we have to decide if let them a real practise. Anyway if you are still looking for a gift, under the Christamas tree, try to put one of these handbooks. It will be a good present for the future of or Planet and an occasin to rflect together with frineds and relatives among candies and wine.

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