TEE CEE’S TIP
Dear Tee Cee, I love Valentine’s Day, but I don’t want to add a burden to our planet while I celebrate love with my friends and family. Any sustainable Valentine’s Day ideas?
—Phoebe
Dear Phoebe, I love that you want to spread kindness and care for everyone, including Mother Earth, on Valentine’s Day. You’re right, the traditional gifts of flowers, cards, candy, and jewelry often come with a heavy environmental toll, but there are more local, sustainable ways to show your love.
• Let your love bloom…healthfully: While commercial flower bouquets may be beautiful, their health and environmental impacts may not be so lovely. They are often imported, grown with toxic chemicals, and wrapped in tissue paper and/or plastic sleeves that must be trashed. Look for healthy planet-loving alternatives labeled domestically grown and sustainably certified by third-party certifiers such as Veriflora, Bloomcheck, Fair Trade, and Rainforest Alliance. Or skip traditional flowers and go with gifts that keep on giving like dried flower arrangements, longlasting houseplants, or culinary herbs.
• Don’t let flowers go to waste: Once any blooms are finished, place them in the compost (remove any ribbons or non-plantbased materials) where they can keep on giving love by contributing to healthy soils.
• Be a crafty Valentine: Make your own eco-friendly card with a collage of recycled materials or even send a digital GIF to make them smile over and over again. Avoid cards containing electronics or with foil embellishments, and cards and envelopes with dark dyes. If the paper is a dark color (like the deep red very common for this holiday) or a fluorescent color on the outside and on the inside when you tear it, the paper fibers are dyed all the way through and are the unfortunate recycling equivalent of putting a red sock in your white laundry. If the paper is white when you tear it, the color is only printed on, so it’s OK to put in your recycling bin. Go circular and look for cards made from post-consumer-content recycled paper.
• Treat your sweetie responsibly: Make a sustainable choice by selecting fair trade or forest-friendly chocolate. Choose locals like Chocolove or Robin Chocolates. Paper wrappers on chocolate bars can be placed in the single-stream curbside recycling bin. If there is a foil wrapper around the chocolate (pure foil, no paper) it can be saved and crushed along with other foil into a ball larger than 2 inches in diameter to be correctly sorted at the recycling center.
• Share love without leaving a trace: Opt for waste-free experiences like an outing, a meal, or take a winter Valentine’s walk and stomp out heart shapes in the snow.
However you choose to celebrate, being mindful of your impact on the planet is an act of love for us all.