Green Moms Carnival: How to Be a Green Consumer

Welcome to the Black Friday edition of the Green Moms Carnival: How to Be a Green Consumer.  Whether you are trying to spend less, buy less, or buy greener, you will find insightful and useful suggestions within the posts below on how to green your Black Friday as well as your holiday shopping in general.

Tips for Green Consumers

In Mindful Shopping Techniques, Micaela of Mindful Momma shares ideas designed to help you feel prepared and unstressed during your holiday shopping, so that you can enjoy the experience and feel good about the choices you made afterwards.

In Green or Greenwashing – Evaluating Enviro-Claims, Amber of Strocel shares her experience with trying to evaluate green claims and avoid greenwashing without a degree in environmental science or chemistry.  Amber offers a list of simple yet powerful guidelines for navigating claims so that you can be a green consumer.

In Living in an Ashram vs Black Friday: My “Green Shopping” Manifesto, Harriet of Climate Mama offers four tips for making your Black Friday a green shopping experience.  I love her idea of using the occasion to discuss your green values with friends and family.

In 4 Ways to Be a Green Consumer on Black Friday and Beyond, Lori of Groovy Green Livin presents four easy ways to lighten your impact on the earth while shopping for the holidays. Don't miss the awesome Black Friday photo she found to introduce her post.

In How to Be a Green Consumer, Betsy of Eco-novice presents numerous alternatives to buying new products as well as tips for how to make any new purchases you do make as eco-friendly as possible.


Green Deals

In Use Black Friday Sales to Try New Green Products, Diane of Big Green Purse shares how the deep discounts of Black Friday and Cyber Monday offer the perfect opportunity to overcome the sticker shock of certain green products. She discusses several categories of green goods likely to enjoy after-Thanksgiving markdowns.

In How Busy People Extreme Coupon for Healthy Food and Extreme Couponing and Stockpiling: What it is and What it Isn’t, Lisa of Condo Blues and The Lazy Budget Chef shares how even green consumers can save 50% or more on groceries by couponing. She wants you to know that stockpiling isn't just for crazy hoarders of junk food, but can instead be "like Ma Ingalls canning and preserving food in the summer when her garden is plentiful."

Rethink Your Buying

In Your Green Dollar – Buy Local, Karen of Best of Mother Earth discusses the benefits of shopping locally for food as well as other products. She encourages readers to "think about where you are spending your dollar this holiday season. Keep the economy close by, support your local farmers, artists and crafters."

In Your Slavery Footprint, Linda of Citizen Green raises awareness about the 27 million slave laborers involved in the production of our everyday consumer products.  She evaluates her own dependence on slave labor(via her results from an online survey by Made in a Free World).  She concludes with suggestions regarding how each of us can take action to eliminate slave labor.

Rethink Your Giving

In Seeing Green on Black Friday, Going Green Mama of The Green Phone Booth, a self-proclaimed Black Friday junkie, discusses how her holiday shopping has evolved over the years.  She shares how planning, listening and sharing have helped her shift towards more sustainable gift purchases.

In Poverty and Being a Green Consumer, Lisa of Retro Housewife Goes Green is mindful of the number of people struggling to make ends meet.  She shares some meaningful ways to help others during the holiday season while at the same time reducing your environmental impact.

In Hundred Dollar Holiday: The Case For A More Joyful Christmas, Tiffany of Nature Moms Blog shares her review of a short book that challenges readers to pick a modest amount of money (such as $100) and spend no more than that on Christmas.  In addition to highlighting her favorite parts of the book (ideas for inexpensive gift giving, for example), Tiffany shares her own ideas for "voluntary simplicity" and gifts of togetherness.

In What’s Clogging Up Your Life? A Story of Unwatched Videos & Other Stuff, Beth of My Plastic-free Life takes a look at the unused stuff among her possessions and wonders whether the things we buy ourselves and others often create an additional burden for us. She suggests that "we need to consider the value of the stuff we buy for ourselves and others, and to think realistically about how useful it will be in the long run."

Ignore Black Friday

In How to be a Green Consumer: First, Ignore Black Friday! (At least on Thanksgiving!), Lynn of Organic Mania expresses frustration with the expansion of Black Friday into a full extended weekend of "deals of a lifetime" beginning on Thanksgiving.  She wonders if all this marketing affects the way we celebrate Thanksgiving: "Do we still give thanks for all that we have? Or do we start planning our shopping sprees?"

Finally, in Red and Green Friday, Abbie of Farmer's Daughter shares how her family spends the day after Thanksgiving (hint: it doesn't involve getting up early or visiting the mall).  Be sure and check out the photo of the barn all decked out for the holiday season.

How will you spend Black Friday this year?  

What are your tips for being a green consumer?

Interested in a more eco-friendly and budget-friendly holiday season?

Click here to read Eco-novice's complete Green Holidays series.