Hello and welcome to another edition of Kid News Combo is a conversation on a single topic that is relevant or important for kids who want to be in the know.
I'm Tori. Today we're going to focus on the holidays which are just a couple of weeks away.
And while it can be a wonderful time of receiving gifts, seasonal decorations, tasty food and being with family and friends, it also leads to something many don't think about and that's a lot of trash.
According to Stanford University, Americans throw away roughly 25 % more trash between Thanksgiving and the new year than any other time, generating 25 million extra tons of garbage.
But there are some simple solutions we can all put to use.
So I'm excited to introduce my guest today, Rebecca Benner, who is the managing director of climate programs at the Nature Conservancy and has a lot of great ideas and suggestions on this topic.
Hi, Rebecca, thanks for being here.
Hi, thanks for having me.
Now, first of all, I want to reassure our listeners that you're not a Grinch.
You're not going to say no presents, no decorations, right?
No, I have a 10 -year -old.
I have never allowed to say that.
Great. So what do you suggest?
Are there some ways that we can kind of find the right balance between keeping the holiday spirit and not producing so much garbage?
Yeah, I mean, honestly, this is top of mind for me, as someone who works on climate and works in conservation.
And I have a 10 -year -old daughter who gets so excited about Christmas, it's not even funny.
And she, I would say she wants for nothing.
And yet she still loves the idea of opening and receiving gifts and giving them to slowly but surely.
So I think a lot about this.
And I've been trying to get more creative.
Or my husband and I have been trying to get more creative as she gets older, thinking about things that one, she really needs and uses.
So something that's very practical right now, she's really into lip balms and chapsticks.
So I try to find ones that will actually moisten her lips and then you know she's actually going to use it and she's going to use it the whole time and it's going to not go to waste and it's not going to get thrown away.
I'm also thinking a lot about experiences.
What does she like to do?
Can I take her someplace?
I think those are really great gift options that have basically zero waste and they create a lifelong memory.
You don't grow out of them.
So my daughter is really into going to shows in New York City.
Could I take her into the city by train and go see a musical or something on Broadway that she doesn't get to do very often but that she might find really exciting.
And I was going to say and then the flip side is that kids could offer experiences to adults like maybe offering to help with some chores or something like that.
Yeah, it's funny you say that because my daughter's present to me last year was a bag with little pieces of paper in it and each one when I unfolded it offered me something different.
I'll do the dishes for you mom on any day you want.
You can teach me math and I won't yell at you.
That was one of them.
So it was a wonderful like given receive and it was it was honestly the best gift she's ever given me and it was all just things that she would do to help make our lives brighter.
That is really sweet.
What a very thoughtful idea.
Now as far as kind of you know homemade gifts or something I mean it's very thoughtful and but also time consuming and ordering online.
I am you know very guilty of this.
It is so convenient but it does have a really big impact on the environment right.
Yeah so I'm guilty of it too.
I live in a pretty rural place and so I'm always toying with OK it's gas to get to the store where I could actually buy something and it's time versus I can click a button and it comes to my house and I really think there's no there's no perfect solution.
You have to do it works for your family.
My suggestion is just be conscious and thoughtful about it.
Don't make it so easy that you just click the button to buy something or say to your parent oh please you just have to look I love this thing online.
It's so easy to come right to our doorstep.
Just be conscious. Take a deep breath.
Do I really need this.
Is this going to bring us joy.
Is this going to help.
And then click the button.
There's no there's no perfect answer and you really do have to make those trade offs.
But yes anything that's shipped in and trucked in from a far place has a greater climate impact than something close by.
And then there's the packaging involved.
I mean there's the you know the boxes and the plastic wrap and and you know the stuffing paper is that.
I mean I try and reuse that you know quite a bit.
We reuse the boxes and stuff.
But I mean is recycling an option for that as well.
I do the same thing in terms of trying to reuse as much as I can.
And I think there are certain things that recycle really well.
We know that aluminum does.
And I think cardboard is another one.
And even if it doesn't recycle it breaks down.
So there are some things that are just more environmentally friendly than others.
And so yes recycling is still an option and something I would definitely support doing particularly because it makes you aware of sort of the packaging and what's going out into the system.
But it's not perfect.
Producing the item in the first place produces the waste and recycling can only it takes a whole lot of energy.
And it is only so good.
So you should definitely do it.
Try to reuse whatever you can and then just you know we have big bins or compost that if you put a piece of cardboard out there eventually it's going to break down.
Might take a little time but actually it's going to break down because it's biodegradable.
Now cardboard is more easy than some of the other things are even paper bags.
And I know that Amazon in particular and some of the other brands have started to use paper bag type things for their packaging that I think break down more easily than others.
But I think a lot of different companies are starting to think about that.
Yeah it's good that they're aware.
And again I know you said some things break down easily than others.
I think plastic is something that doesn't break down at all and it's amazing when I read some articles on it and I realize how much plastic is in our lives.
I mean just grocery shopping like everything is in plastic.
It's crazy. It is crazy and it is really hard to combat.
It's even in things like shampoos.
I mean if you start to look down at ingredient lists it shows up everywhere.
And so again there's only so much you can do.
I always try the grocery store to go for the glass bottle if I can find it or I take my little mesh bags for vegetables.
But to cut out plastic and that's going to take a massive cultural shift and it will only happen over time.
Yeah slowly and surely and like you said I think being aware of it is probably the first step.
So going back to kind of more of the holiday decorations I mean I was assuming thinking you would say that having a more natural decorations would be the best way to go.
I mean especially if you're living in a rural area.
I mean pine cones would be beautiful or just branches could could really help with the holiday spirit.
For sure. I mean so first buying a live tree is is best if you can swing it even if you have to travel all the ways to get that live tree.
It's been absorbing carbon.
It's been helping bring nutrients into soil.
So live trees are good.
And then something I do is where we get our live tree they often do a lot of tree trimming there and cutting off the lower branches for people to put it into their stands.
I take them. I always ask them can I have these.
They say absolutely.
And so then I use those around our house to decorate the mantle or to decorate the bookcase.
And so I have greens everywhere but they just come from other people's trees.
And I love that. And then yes we have a whole bunch of pine cones.
Those are to me are a wonderful source of natural decoration.
And then you know all of it eventually breaks down by the time I move my pine needles out there brittle and brown and I dump them over the edge of my porch and they become soil.
That's awesome. Something I did when I was young we like I said I grew up in Connecticut and we would get a needle and a thread and make string of popcorn and cranberry to wrap around the tree.
And then when the holidays were over we would take it outside so that birds could eat it I guess.
So that always seemed kind of like more of a more natural eco friendly decoration.
I loved that. I love that.
And when I was little we did another thing to you where this takes resources.
But you know I know that we in the mail get all kinds of mail that we don't need or magazines we don't we only look at once.
And my uncle and I would take them all and we'd cut them all into strips and we'd make huge chains.
And they weren't always red and green but they were super decorative and you can just loop make strings and loop them and attach them and you can make huge chains that can go all around the room.
And we used to do that at Christmas time all the time.
I love that idea. We're going to take a quick break and when we come back we'll talk about some festive eco friendly ideas for gift wrapping how to avoid too many holiday leftovers and advice on the concept of re gifting more Kid News combos right after this.
Today's Kid News combos episode is brought to you in part by a generous grant from the Nicholas B.
Ottoway Foundation committed to improving communities and impacting lives through three unique philanthropic efforts focused on education journalism and community impact.
We are grateful for their support and the support of all our generous donors.
And we're back. I'm talking with Rebecca Benner managing director of climate programs at the Nature Conservancy.
Now I love wrapping presents.
I mean I'm not that great at it but it is fun and it's fun to put the bows and all the little doodads on the gifts and everything.
But that wrapping paper for me, especially the sparkly kind is so wasteful.
Yeah I am not good at it at all.
Usually it looks like a truck hit my present no time.
I also enjoy the process of unwrapping it.
I have done two things.
One you know as a kid my daughter struggled with this.
I did wrap all of her presents in newspaper one year.
She thought that was a little much.
So I found a compromise solution where I found that you can find sort of the recycled brown paper.
So it's not stained all the different colors and it's supposed to be made from more recyclable materials recyclable materials.
So I try to get some of that as she's gotten older we reuse things around the house.
I'm not opposed to wrapping it in brown paper bags but you know wrapping it nicely and then putting a colorful bow on top.
So I think there's ways you can supplement.
yeah it's still wrap presents.
And I know you know we Amazon usually sends gifts and like in like these you know material bags and and I have saved those many times and reuse them and reuse them.
So I feel at least that's something that's not just going straight into the garbage.
I do the same thing and I feel like at this point every time my daughter goes to her birthday party we're all giving each other the same bags that somebody gave us the last time so those also really you can buy some nice bags of tissue paper those can get reused.
Yeah yeah well speaking of kind of reusing what about re gifting.
Which is you know if you've received a gift like one year I ended up getting like five scarves people thought I really needed scars and I didn't really need them all.
So I was like well maybe I should just pass them on to somebody else.
I actually think that's a great idea my always initial a lot of times now people will send return receipts with things you could return and exchange it that actually requires a lot of energy.
So I love the idea of re gifting because then you're not sending it back which oftentimes they just discard the materials anyway.
You're actually packaging it up and giving it all to somebody else who would like it so i'm i'm a big fan you just have to make sure you keep track of who gave you what.
Right right right yeah not not make a mistake of giving it back to the person who gave it to you and then as far as food, you know there's a lot of.
big holiday dinners and feasts and so there tends to be a lot of extra food and is there a way environmentally friendly way to deal with all that.
yeah so the only advice I have is well first plan your meals figure out who's coming talk to your family say who's coming to dinner, what are we going to serve.
Anything you can do to buy local ingredients, first of all, is great for climate it just travels less far get things that are seasonably appropriate maybe it won't make the most interesting fruit salad, but it will certainly lower that climate impact.
Then plan your meals know how many try to make the about the right amount for the right number of people food waste is a big climate issue, so the less food waste the better.
And then do some research, I mean, this is a great kid project.
Do some research into local soup kitchens into local churches into where do they potentially have mouths they need to feed so there's an entire extra dish.
Like just a bunch of mashed potatoes that don't get eaten is there a soup kitchen or someplace in need that is actually serving people that would take it now sometimes they don't.
Sometimes they might or maybe you bought 10 cans of vegetables and only two, so I think that's another important thing you could do is just research and then eat leftovers.
leftovers and have that dinner again and again.
You waste as little as possible, and then if you're in the really fortunate position to compost try to compost.
yeah I think that's the last ditch effort to sort of preserve what you can have the energy from that food and turn it into useful soil.
yeah yeah I mean it's like black gold for for the garden is is the the compost and I yeah trying to make sure that if I don't finish stuff put it in the freezer.
You know, just so that it can be reused longer I think yeah frozen meals frozen past meals a lot we make big amounts of things and then freeze them right there's gonna be the nights where no one feels like cooking.
yeah yeah and and I used to if we had a lot of leftover food bring it into the newsroom and it was amazing how quickly it all got eaten up.
So yeah when I was a graduate student, I mean I think some of the professors would just sort of bring in exactly the extra dessert or that no one cared at all.
yeah yeah yeah now they're very very happy to eat that so just looking beyond the holidays, I mean you know new year new beginnings what what are some things that kids can do in 2025 that would help the environment I know it's a big question.
yeah I mean there's so many especially kids i'm trying to think about kids well what is it not family conversations about different choices your family makes like try to understand where your carbon footprint comes from you know does your family travel a lot.
Do you carpool places where are you going to go next on vacation where in your house do you have maybe light bulbs you could change to more energy efficient ones what about your appliances.
learn about what's around you and in your family and understand the different choices that you're making so I think that's a big one is just educating yourself.
I think as a kid also the more you talk about it with your friends, the more conscience consciousness, we have around the issues.
that's huge I mean we are counting on the kids of today to really helps the issues that we have around climate and so, the more I think they talk about it and make a new year's resolution to say i'm going to bring this up with my friends.
You can also be really aware of sort of what temperature you set your house at and where your thermostat is and again going back to food waste.
Really think make sure that you're trying to eat those leftovers take it with you to lunch, the next day so hey mom dad I know we have that leftover last night i'll take it to school tomorrow.
So I think I think things like talking about it being really aware of what's happening in your household and the choices you make the amount of food that you waste.
You can encourage you can wash your clothes in cold water that's a great one I do that now to you.
Getting your. Something we talked about is yeah gardening you know, like if you, even if you're in the city, like you have a deck, or you know just have a plant or something yeah just that's good on so many different levels.
To nurture and watch watch something grow.
Big backyard garden.
yeah yeah to get my daughter aware of where her food comes from, and how it grows, so I like that one as well.
yeah so there there, there are some simple things, but but every little step makes a difference, so I think that's the key.
Every action matters and collectively, we can make a massive difference.
So good good things to think about well um I think this has been a great conversation and hopefully it's us barn some good ideas for for some of our listeners to try some some different things as we get ready for the holidays for Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanza as well all coming up in just a few
weeks so. Well, thank you so much Rebecca I really appreciate your time and and all these wonderful suggestions and I hope you have a wonderful holiday thank you I hope you do as well.
Thanks to you for listening, please let us know if you have any fun eco friendly ways to reduce holiday waste by sending us an email at we hear you at kid news .org have a wonderful holiday season.
