holiday shopping

This holiday season do something patriotic: buy American. Not goods from China sold by companies with headquarters in America, but goods made locally by American workers. This won't just keep jobs here and help the economy, it will also avoid pollution and greenhouse gases due to shipping. And if you apply it to food and drink, it will ensure better quality, fresher goods, that are less likely to be covered in pesticides. Healthy food guidelines are very simple . Always avoid things that are produced outside a 100 mile radius from where you live.

And here is another good guideline: the bulkier and the heavier the item, the more good it will do everyone to buy local. The same applies to in reverse to complexity. A cellphone made in Asia is not as bad as wine shipped from Australia. While you could argue that such thinking will lead to keeping low tech jobs and losing valuable high technology, that is not necessarily the case. High tech devices are often designed in Silicon Valley and manufactured abroad. The high tech part is in the design.

And while we are on the topic of shipping. Avoid shipping yourself, especially by air. That too will not just benefit our ecosystem, it will save you a lot of headache, anger, and bouts of hypertension.