Is it the holidays yet?
After such a strange year, Kirihimete can’t come quickly enough.
Still, it’s likely to be a different sort of Christmas, this time around. The global pandemic has disrupted most things in one way or another and this holiday period is unlikely to be an exception.
Some of us are cut off from whānau and friends thanks to travel disruptions. Some of us are feeling the stress of lockdowns, remote working and the general chaos of it all.
For many of us, Yuletide 2021 is shaping up to be a uniquely trying holiday season.
And it’s not like gift shopping isn’t already stressful. Finding a thoughtful, meaningful gift is hard – it takes time and effort – and only gets more difficult the longer you wait.
And while point-and-click online shopping is one option for easy gifting this Christmas, in an age of overproduction, climate stress, and now something called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, the whole process can seem just a little bit too wasteful, unsustainable and expensive to feel truly good about.
So what can we do about it?
How about this Christmas, instead of doubling down on our usual plastic product binge (that will mostly end up in local landfill by the New Year, anyway), we change our tack a bit, shift a few priorities, and try to solve the gifting dilemma in a way that makes more sense?
Enter Trees That Count, a brilliantly Kiwi organisation dedicated to getting Aotearoa’s native trees planted where they’re needed most.
Simply put, Trees That Count is an online marketplace that connects people looking to donate native trees with people who want to plant them. Kiwi individuals and organisations donate funds and Trees That Count matches those funds with native planting projects around the country.
And this is where stressed-out Christmas shoppers come in. The Trees That Count online marketplace makes it easy to gift a tree to anyone, quickly and easily, and all from the comfort of your laptop or smartphone.
Trees aren’t expensive: a $10 donation gets a real McCoy native tree put in the ground, and it only takes two minutes of time to complete the gifting process. Once your order is complete, news of your goodwill will be delivered to your recipient by way of a stylishly designed Christmas email (along with a message from you) as well as details about where their tree will be planted and the good it will do.
$10, two minutes, done. Easy, sustainable, meaningful Christmas giving. Yes, please.
Trees That Count are a good organisation doing good things. They are run by the very well-respected Project Crimson Trust, and work with community groups all year long to help create a healthier, more beautiful Aotearoa.
