2 Choices

We always have a choice in life. We make them every single day. Blog or play around on Facebook, organic vs local, paper or plastic, water or pop, walk or drive, sleep or coffee. Sometimes things work out perfectly and we don't have to pick between two choices that we like. We can buy local food that is also organic. But most of the time we do have to make a decision. We have to pick which is the lesser evil, which is going to have the least impact on the environment. It can be a very personal decision. Like if I only have the choice of local and not organic or not local and organic I will pick the local option because I like to support our local farmers and there is less environmental impact in getting that food to me. But others may chose to go the organic route regardless of origin. 

With Christmas I had a choice to make...shop in a store and have a hard time finding a selection of eco-gifts or shop online and have a huge variety of options. I chose the latter but this year it seems to have come at a cost...that looks like this:

This is the new packaging that is being used by Chapters. The packaging boasts the following:

* It reduces weight in each package which reduces shipping costs (and by default fuel). I find this to be debatable because the craft paper they used previously did not seem to make the boxes weigh more. 

* It can be reused in other packages 

* When deflated will reduce by 99% of its volume. 

* It can be send for recycling which involves deflating them and sending them to South Carolina. 

Now you tell me which of these is the greenest solution? I have placed an ad on a local Mom 2 Mom board as well as Freecycle so hopefully someone will take them for reuse in shipping holiday packages (if you are local and need packaging for parcels email me and I will give you these for free). Sending them to South Carolina may mean that they get recycled into new products but it also means that there is emissions and energy usage from getting them there. In fact the better option if I can not find someone to reuse them would be for me to deflate them and recycle them in our blue box program. 

Now was it worth it? I still say yes because I was able to buy environmentally friendly non toxic toys for the kiddo's in our lives....items which I have not been able to find in any local store (maybe they were just sold out..who knows).

What choices have you had to make lately? Do you stand by your decision?  

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