Shop safely, America. But do shop.

The Christmas shopping season is almost upon us, ready to claw open our clamped, unwilling mouths and cram them so full with cheer that we collectively choke on our own merriment and saliva. Many retailers have maximized their potential hours of profit by opening their stores in the morning before closing the night before, including 80% coupons in the small plastic bag of giblets found in most frozen turkeys, chaining cashiers to their stations with lightweight chromium steel “efficiency tethers” and allowing would-be shoppers to sublet entire portions of parking lots for tent cities, RVs, and small condo shares.

Of course, you can and will do at least a portion of your holiday buying online, but the safe point-and-click of the Internet shopping cart carries with it none of the thrill of victory, or the savage pleasure that comes from hearing the pathetic, mewling shrieks of the defeated. Black Friday unites the twin American obsessions of waiting in line and staying inside, while elevating the act of purchasing bargain electronics to a savage yet sublime battle of wills. With that in mind, here are a few tips to ensure that this year you crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women. You know, secrets for shoppers.

10. Prepare for distractions and have an exit strategy. Let nothing deter you from achieving your goal. “Can you please move these trampled corpses out of the aisle? They’re blocking the Call of Duty display.”

9. Odds are that things will get violent, and that sooner rather than later. Bring a knife. They’re best for close-quarter combat situations, like jockeying for position in line at the Best Buy. A knife can also double as a box-cutter if you reach a display before the employees have had a chance to remove the products from their manufacturer’s casing, and of course, nothing’s going to push that mother of three away from your iPad 2 faster than a quick, lateral thrust to the kidneys.

8. Plan your route. Is it more practical to take your own vehicle, or commandeer somebody else’s once you take to the streets? If you take your own, you’ll have to do your own modifications, and active protection systems don’t grow on trees. What kind of self-propelled artillery will you need? Do you plan on plating your vehicle with composite armor or are you sticking with steel? Bearing in mind that every major transit artery will be blocked solid from now until January, does it make more sense to fund and develop helicopter support? These are things you should be thinking about now, not when you’re trying to navigate the fume-filled and gang-dominated blood mazes that once comprised your local downtown area. Of course, you may already live in Los Angeles.

7. Hydrate. Forget the Sunny D; these times call for Gatorade. Get it in you.

6. Shed your innocence. If you think you’re going to find a single parking space without screeching horrific obscenities at numerous elderly disabled veterans, then you don’t have the stomach for this. Why don’t you just stay home? You could order all your presents a week before the holidays and present everyone with a printed invoice (“So it was supposed to ship on the 22nd, but I guess something in the warehouse got tied up – anyhow, I hate to spoil the surprise, but here’s the receipt – you should be able to expect it by mid-January, the lady on the phone said”) or knit everyone an incredibly itchy scarf. Accept your limitations.

5. Hone your focus. What do eye contact, verbal speech, and the human ability to experience the feeling of mercy have in common? There is no place for them this day.

4. Remember that this is a marathon, not a 5k or even a half-marathon. Promotional sales have been extended over the last few years from Friday-only to cover the entire weekend. Some even begin on Thanksgiving Day, an absurd and tragic reminder of the arbitrary nature of brand pricing.

3. Multitask. Worried there may be a better deal online than what you’re being offered in the store? Oh, my friend, you had better believe that there is an app for that. Now you can shop online while you are shopping in person. Efficiency. Singularity. Unity. Soon, our gracious corporate overlords will find a way to make every day like Black Friday, and every technological device a potential Target. We’ll always be shopping. All things single, all things alike. It’ll be like the movie Groundhog Day, only real and wonderful and full of bottom-priced DVD box gift sets of Sex and the City with all nineteen movies and interactive Stanford Blatch-voiced Crocs.

2. Retain the element of surprise. Upon retiring for the evening, steal your family members’ cell phones (or alarm clocks, for the older set) and reset the time. Won’t they feel like suckers when they wander downstairs as late as 7 a.m. only to see you surrounded by your numerous purchases and covered in the blood of strangers.

1. Alternately, keep your head down, pick up a drink, and pray for January. Better make it two drinks, just to be safe. It’s going to be a long winter, but all winters eventually come to an end.

Image: afroboof

In Britain, the amount of yearly food waste can fill London’s Wembley Stadium.

Here’s something humiliating.

I’m a Brit. (That’s not the humiliating bit. Bear with me). We’re so careless with our groceries that we throw away around a third of them each year – at a total cost of $20 billion. Appalling, dreadful and…unreal. Yes, that’s the word. Look at that figure: $20 billion. Try to imagine it for a second, there in the room with you. Bet you can’t. I’ll bet even the Donald would struggle with it. It’s an abstraction that means nothing except to economists and…well, that’s about it.

What’s so may-the-ground-swallow-me-up humilating is this: the people of WRAP’s Love Food Hate Waste campaign just made that number real. In a number of events across the north of England over the last six months, they’ve  taken the amount of food the average British household tosses away in one year, cooked it up, and fed it to 1,000 hungry students. Of course, even students would draw the line at eating that banana I threw away in January, so this food was donated by regional food distribution charities like Food Aware and Real Aid, and the chosen menu focused on big, hearty dishes like vegetable curry and rhubarb crumble. Think Jamie’s School Dinners and you’d also bag the educational side of it – each event featured demonstrations on ways to turn limp leftovers into full-flavored feasts.

Back to $20 billion. How much food is that? Well, you can’t fit it into one room. In fact, you’ll need to fill London’s Wembley Stadium.

…8 times.

That’s a lot of food.

Images: Cushdy, mhaller1979.

QuoteDaily quotes at EcoSalon.

“We spend money we don’t have, on things we don’t need, to make impressions that don’t last, on people we don’t care about.”

- Tim Jackson

Image: “Shopping – Despair” David Blackwell

ColumnThanks, I brought my hands.

Hi, I’m Sara, and I don’t use bags. Oh, sometimes I use my bags, I just don’t use yours. San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Seattle, Dallas, everywhere I go, I’m not bagging it. Today’s message comes to you from Cape Cod, where I’m embedded with EcoSalon’s DuFault unit, also not-a-bagger. Here, we’ve been eyed suspiciously for buying not one but four avocados and plopping them into a roomy handbag instead of a plastic sack. We’ve bought and returned a sweater without a bag, picked up new earbuds without a bag, even bought a battery – all without a bag.

Sometimes there’s no escaping the bag, even when you bring your own. Social mores ensure that the bottle of wine picked up on the way to the dinner party be brown-bagged inside your bag. At least they don’t try to bag the housewarming orchids at most stores. But on those inevitable days where I forget my Envirosax or my swag of bag from the latest green event, and I’m not in the mood to go fetch it, I simply go bag free. I endure the social ostracism in the name of toned upper arms in addition to my environmental sensitivity.

This concerns people, who, it turns out, really believe in bagging things. I’ve learned even picking up truffles sans-sack warrants a stare, never mind that the chocolate comes in a bag already. Walking down the aisles holding my geranium dish soap, a Pink Lady apple, brie and head of dino kale, you’d think I was juggling obese ferrets on a Ritalin bender. “Do you want a bag? A basket? Hey, how about a cart?” a stock boy will ask, hoping I’m not about to throw a ferret at the wall or launch into my life story. Some days, I want to reassuringly scream, “Hey, guy? I’m not crazy lady!” but restrain myself, knowing this will hardly help my case. What happened to carrying things with our actual arms? Stocking up for the Superbowl I get. You’re going to need a bag or five, maybe even a cart. Stocking up for a wild night of pear and spring greens with goat cheese for dinner? I rest my case.

Most of the time, I’m just amused by how relentless the bag pushers are. Rather than sigh in irritation during my moments of canvas bag forgetfulness, I’ve actually taken to forgetting my reusable bags on purpose just to see if I can be allowed out of the store without a bag for my chives or new d’Orsays. No one has called me crazy to my face. But their eyes say it all.

Don’t take my word for it. You, too, can enjoy confused stares and with any luck, mild arguments.

I can report that the box that was once bulging with pretty gray Restoration Hardware bags and shiny Annual Event sacks is down to just one lonely, wrinkled Fred Segal bag, with no plans to refill. I don’t even get the occasional paper bag “for the recycling” anymore; the bin is outside my front door, and it occurred to me recently that the connection between bagging recyclables for a nine yard walk to the bin and my ever-hopeful aspiring muffin top was more than a little coincidental.

A jug of organic tea, the fresh bundle of tulips, a bag of Feline Pine, a bar of paper-wrapped grapefruit-scented vegetable soap, actual grapefruits: all perfectly capable of getting home without a bag, though you will need hands or the crook of an elbow. Considering the facts on bags, though, there’s really never an excuse to use one in the event you forget your own. You can ask for the paper bags, but if you’re only picking up a few things, why not toss them into your purse or better yet, work those biceps.

Most things, it turns out, just don’t need bags. Why, for example, does a handle of bananas need its own bag, as a recent cashier insisted? I know conventional banana skins are teeming with pesticides but I think the carton of cream can handle cozy company with some organic bananas for the three-minute journey home.

If all the bagging is any indication, humans are pathetically fragile. And if individual items such as detergent and multivitamins are so toxic they need their own baggage, why are we putting them on and in our bodies at all?

Being a resident of San Francisco, I seem to end up at Mollie Stone’s more than I’d like. It’s a grocery store chain that cannot decide if it wants to be Whole Foods or Safeway, and ends up failing at both. (The prices are high and the quality is notoriously inconsistent.) But I am at least morally outraged by the baggers at Mollie Stone’s, who are customer-service-hellbent on bagging things in as many layers of bags as possible, and that counts for something. Think the already-bagged baguette doesn’t need its own bag inside your bag? Think again. That hormone-free rotisserie chicken in the sealed plastic suitcase? Unless you insist, and sometimes anyway, that chicken is getting its own bag.

Whatever happened to wrapping things in twine and brown paper, or just…well, holding them? In a short 40 years of convenience plastic, we’ve become hooked on bagging it. Double bagging it, as if we need one for the road. Separating food from cosmetics, soap from sundries, categorizing our consumption in concentric rounds of poly. If you’ve stopped the bottle, it’s time to stop the bag, too.

This is the latest installment in your editor’s column, The Insider’s Guide to Life, exploring topics such as media, culture, sex, politics, and anything else. Cheers and spellcheck!

Image: taberandrew

It has come to my attention that the current economic downturn has resulted in a reduction of global warming gases in the United States.  The recession has led to a smaller economy and less energy consumption, which, in turn, has led to cleaner air.

This is good news to be sure, but I don’t know how much enthusiasm I can work up for it. “Silver linings” are tricky things, and there is sometimes little comfort to be had when a benefit results from a massively gloomy situation.  If I found out that I had only weeks to live, my reaction would not be “Well, at least I don’t have to hear another word about those damn Kardashians,” although that is certainly the bright side of a tragic and untimely death. Similarly, clean air is nice, but can it really make us care less about worldwide financial ruin? I don’t know the answer to that, but in the spirit of glasses being half full, I offer this list of dubious advantages to a really bad economy.

• Pleading poverty is the new get-out-of-jail-free card. Don’t feel like wasting an entire afternoon antiquing with the ladies? Don’t want to go to a fancy restaurant with the most boring couple you’ve ever known? Claiming you can’t afford it is the new way to get out of everything. And no one will dare try to talk you out of it.
• Everything is on sale. Seriously. From cashmere sweaters to cocaine, from condos to Caribbean vacations, everything can be had at a discount.
• The general public has caught up with me and now people everywhere distrust the fashion industry. I am no longer alone in feeling that there isn’t a sheath dress on earth worth $1,700. As more and more women are forced to keep wearing the clothes they purchased in 2007, they are disinclined to slavishly follow style makers who decree that the new fashion “must haves” are bolero jackets, harem pants, and anything chartreuse.
• Comfort food has made a comeback. Belt-tightening has brought depression-era food back in style as consumers lose their taste for extravagantly whimsical restaurant dishes. Fewer and fewer eateries feature main courses that ascend 12-inches into the air, the main components of which are jicama, white truffles, and beef cheeks. Restaurants that want to stay in business have begun re-thinking the appeal of $22.00 appetizers, opting instead for meatloaf, fried chicken and artisanal ring dings.
• In related news: Maitre d’s and hostesses in fine restaurants have become noticeably more polite. Gone are the days when restaurants had unlisted telephone numbers and bad-tempered models worked the reservation desk. Eating out is still expensive, but it is now possible to dine in nice restaurants without sleeping with or giving birth to the chef.
• Due to the obscene expense of taxis, it is far easier to hail a cab in Manhattan. Conversely, it is next to impossible to find a seat on the cross-town bus.
• Plumbers, electricians and painters who would not return your phone calls five years ago now send out holiday greeting cards and call to solicit your business.
• The recession has put a significant and well-documented strain on relationships. On the bright side, it has also raised the value of gold. So your marriage may be breaking up, but you will probably get a really good price if you have to sell your wedding ring for scrap metal.
• In order to make themselves more marketable, and better able to find jobs in a down economy, young people are getting their tattoos removed – as mothers everywhere rejoice.

Editor’s Note: Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Image: marysecasol.com

Holiday shopping is almost as exciting as the post-holiday sale shopping that comes on in full force during the month of January. I’ve scooped up beautiful handbags, shoes, jackets and jewelry during this time of the year that I would have never been able to afford otherwise.

In the first week of January, sales are running across the board, and I took the liberty to sniff out my three top picks to buy now and wear later.

1. A Sequin Organic Jersey Kimono Dress from Elsom. Layer it with a pair of leggings, boots, a cute cropped blazer and a vibrant scarf and you’ve got one hot outfit this winter. In the summer, pair it with flats and maybe an oversized boyfriend cardigan for a relaxed look.

2. Skinny Blazer by John Patrick Organic. Every girl needs a good blazer. It’s the LBD of daily wear. You should have a go-to black one, and if you have graduated to a more risky style sense, pretty in pink is the perfect palate for transitioning from winter’s beiges to summer’s whites!

3. NeuAura Plum Heels. Open-toed shoes with layered tights and socks this winter keeps you thick with the fashion pack. When the temperature warms up, lose the layers and go for bare legs.

If you didn’t quite get what you wanted from Santa this year, take it upon yourself to get what you deserve at a discount, and let those pieces carry you through the winter into spring!

If the green movement had its own Santa Claus, would he have a green beard or would she wear a vegan cape? Business News Daily reports that a new survey shows the archetypal green buyer would be a younger female with a post-graduate degree. Further, the least likely green consumer would be a man over the age of 55 years.

According to a survey from Crowd Science’s Just Ask! “men are nearly twice as likely to believe that buying products marketed as green makes no difference.” Sandra Marshall is vice president of research for Crowd Science. As she told Business News Daily, “We’re seeing an interesting gap in what we call ‘green shopitudes’ when you consider gender, age, and education. Women and younger age groups appear to be more eco-centric when it comes to shopping practices.”

That’s great for women, but where does this leave the menfolk? We asked our own Scott Adelson to weigh in. As Scott tells it, “I always was of the notion that too many men see the idea of legacy as an individualistic concept, rather than a communal one. This is by no means always the case, but it seems that women have a better ear for issues like the environment, education, even health care.”

Further, does buying green mean you’re committed to all things eco? Personally, I think anyone who makes an effort to take out the recycling deserves props, but you’re going to find people who think being green means eating vegan. Or driving a Prius. Or supporting environmental initiatives. Or yes, buying green. Sure, it seems silly to be caught up in labels, but when a large percent of the population devotes itself to attacking the science of climate change and more, it’s not the worst thing to pick up a banner and wave it.

And what does this really say about gender issues in the green movement? If I look at my own coterie of friends, I can’t really say that gender plays a significant factor. True, many of my “greener” friends are women. Most are also mothers of young children, contributing heavily to their interest in a toxin-free lifestyle.

But my husband is arguably greener than I am, especially when it comes to debating the contents of the recycling bin. (Me? I tend to follow this guide; he’s a little more adventurous.) I know three or so men whose opinions espouse exactly what is being touting in this study. My friend Dave is convinced that green labeling is just a giant marketing scam. But for every Dave I know a Scott Adelson or a Brian Clark Howard or a Jeffrey Davis.

Then again, my unscientific sampling of friends doesn’t compete with a formal study. Do you agree that women tend to shop greener than men, or are in fact a deeper shade of green?

Image: aerokev

You better not shout. You better not cry. You better not snake someone’s parking space at the mall cause they might be high. Santa Claus is coming to town! Yay!

At the cost of looting yet another candy coated jingle, it’s the most wonderful time of the year, but also the most stressful. And arguments can ensue over mundane nonsense because we are under pressure to buy what we cannot afford, entertain even though our nests are distressed and lacking luster, and are downing sugar by the barrel at every turn. Here are some of the common tussles we encounter during the holidays:

1. Sacrificial Office Workers

Scrooge is alive and well in America. Just ask many an employee who is being told by the boss to cut their needed vacation, work long hours and forgo the annual holiday party and bonus this year due to hard times. Bah Humbug. If only every boss could be Michael Scott of The Office fame!

2. Shopping Scuffles

They happen wherever there are hordes in a hurry – in a busy street bustling with humans toting many bags, a packed mall parking lot, the line at The Cheesecake Factory, on the road to get to the mall or vacation destination, or with your family over the right thing to buy Nana or teachers. “You got Miss D. a Starbuck’s card last year! It’s so stupid. Get her something better!”

3. Family Break Time Battles

You want to hang around the house and finally get things organized. He wants to drive up the coast and hike, and the kids want to spend all of your money on a “real vacation” that involves sun, water, mediocre food at high prices and cute members of the opposite sex. It’s hard to agree on the best way to spend time away from work at school because everyone has a different idea of how to savor events like New Year’s eve and down time.

4. Disappointment Over Gifts

Taking back lousy gifts is not as simple as it used to be with the exception of department stores like Nordstrom and Macy’s which aren’t as desperate for a sale as the smaller boutiques. You might have been expecting jewelry and he bought you rainboots – believing you would go mad over the way they resemble classic and edgy Frye Durango harness boots. Your kid wanted just about anything from the Apple store yet being the smart parent you are, you opted for flannel pajamas and slippers. Life isn’t fair, but it can be warm and fuzzy.

5. Coming “Home” for Christmas and Feeling 13 Again

Mom has done so much for you and the family, schlepping that 10-foot tree through the door on her back, slaving over the crockpot, shopping like a fiend to get those Uggs in just the right shade of metallic silver. But pleasing her can be a mixed bag. She doesn’t want you to see your old friends if it takes time away from seeing her. Dad doesn’t understand why you don’t pick up your shit at your age, or why you are loafing and watching television instead of helping him repaint the house. Your sister is jealous because you got a designer watch and she got a toaster and your brother’s wife can’t do wrong in your parents’ eyes while you are never on time for dinner and live with a guy who doesn’t make enough money. They all get huffy when you tell them to f— off. Ahh, yes. It’s good to be home.

Images: 8136496@NO5;  NBC; Evergreenkamal; Websterkate; Consumerist; Seanosh

There’s the trove of holiday gifts for loved ones in the cabinet that has been assembled at the ready since June…of 2009. Then there’s the one person on my list I inevitably forget: say, my own mother. I’m working on this, I really am, but if you’re like me and have yet to check off that last special someone, join me in the quest to save some face with something lovely. If you order any of these gifts by 2 p.m. EST tomorrow (yes, the clock’s ticking uncomfortably fast – we’re slacker shoppers, remember?), you’ll have your present in time for Christmas with standard shipping. And they’re all under $100 (most are under $50), so no sweat, sister.

So go. Done! Whew.

For your fashionista friend or new pal:

Montmartre fingerless gloves, handmade and organic, just $29

Kids and your favorite savers:

Glass piggy bank, $39

For your best friend:

Believe necklaces, prices vary by piece, $19-59

For the hostess or the boss:

Organic lavender caramels, (spring for the 12-piece, you), $29

For the guys:

Living ecosphere, $89

For mom, because you’d never really forget:

Reversible silk throw, $98

(Items shown in clockwise order from top left. This post is sponsored by green retail partner VivaTerra.)

It’s easy to rush around department stores with our girlfriends, feasting our eyes on sale items while rarely consciously connecting with the items we’re buying. After all, we’re Americans and we just want the most we can get with our money, right?

Conscious choices require conscious shoppers and new online shopping venue FashionStake intends to make you think before you buy.

With a tag line that reads “The Fashion Democracy,” we can’t say enough about how they do make shopping fair for all, interpreting fashion in how we look at our purchases and how designers fill our orders.

FashionStake is essentially a designer trunk show with you, the shopper at the helm, having control over whether the designers actually produce. You shop, you pre-order, you wait for the masses to help make the maximum order threshold and when met, the piece goes into production, your credit card is charged and you get something you really want. By using this pre-order model, the site is able to access designs before they hit stores and only make exactly what has already been ordered – and at a lower price point than what other shops will be offering in spring.

Fashion democracy!

The FashionStake website says the idea was born out of founder Vivian Weng’s personal frustration.

“After spending her life working with major designers such as Elie Tahari and ESCADA, as well as emerging designers such as Jeffrey Monteiro, Vivian knew first-hand how difficult it was for designers to reach their target audience, no matter how amazing their collections were. Moreover, as a fashion-lover, she was frustrated at paying sky-high prices at department stores for relatively uninspiring items. The fashion industry seemed broken.”

So Weng is fixing it and we are more than elated she’s pulled in four top notch sustainable designers for her “Holiday Showcase” roster including amazing (really, read his story) silk scarves by  David Peck, dresses (and the above rad jumpsuit) from Tara St James of Study, jewelry by Mociun and eco-friendly hand bags from Collina Strada.

All sales end December 20th so get on it and order!