Green Valentine's Day Tips

This Valentine's Day season, you may be scrambling for what to do for your loved one. In addition to knowing what they'd like, weighing the budget, and finding the perfect gifts, the environmentally conscious love-bird will also factor in how 'green' their plans are for February 14th. 

Luckily, many of the Valentine's Day 'staples' that people commonly use to express their love and gratitude for their significant others can be adjusted to ensure sustainability and eco-friendliness. For the environmentally-conscious couples out there, these hallmarks of Valentine's Day can incorporate green practices in ways that will show your love not only for your partner but also for your planet!

• Date:
  Walk, bike, or take public transit to your destination so that you reduce your carbon footprint compared with driving
   
• Dinner:
  If you eat a vegetarian meal instead of a meat-based meal, the associated emissions with that meal will be less
   
• Wine:
  While at dinner, opt for a bottle of wine that comes as close to local as possible to minimize the environmental impact of the bottle
   
• Flowers:
  If buying your partner flowers, there are many strategies for making sure they are sustainable, including buying local, finding someone to deliver them who will use bike courier rather than a van, use tools like Bloomcheck that rate the sustainability of where the flowers came from, etc. Consider the source of your flowers and if they were grown in a sustainable manner
   
• Chocolates:
  Similarly, if purchasing chocolates for your loved ones see if you can upgrade to brands of chocolate that are graded higher on sustainability such as Zotter or Tony's Chocolate rather than Hershey's
   
• Stuffed Animal:
  If you want to give a cuddly stuffed animal, there are plenty of organizations that sell stuffed animals where the proceeds go to saving actual animals and their habitats in the rainforest such as the Orangutan Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund, and Oceana

• Jewelry:
  Go to a pawn shop and find a recycled/reused gems instead of adding to the carbon footprint of newly mined/manufactured gems/jewelry

This is just a list and very rough outline of thoughts that may inspire lots of people.

You Could Give your partner a GSS-3 Green Comparison from Green Star Standard.

Let us know the 3 products that your partner was comparing for their next purchase.

GSS will give you a GSS Comparison for $99.95 USD on those 3 products, in the same product type (e.g. 3 different TVs, 3 different flowers, 3 different batteries, 3 different tires, etc...).

1. Submit your "3 Products to Compare" at:
   To enter your comparison request, you must :
   
   1.  create a Green Star Standard account ( create authenticated GSS user ID here ) and 
   2.  login to your account using the home page login on the right side of the page!
   3.  submit info on 3 unique items from one category here:
      https://www.greenstarstandard.com/gss-3-item-comparison

       

2. We'll Review your Request, and the first 100 unique ones will get 15 GSS Tokens that will be good towards future purchases of GSS Comparisons. [Note: Qualified ShareNode Members can receive up to $50 off by using their accumulated GSS tokens that they get as part of their membership (become a ShareNode Member here).]
    
3. We'll get back to you on how to pay for and review the results of the Comparisons Submitted... and accumulate and use your GSS Tokens in the future.

Paul-Michael Dekker and Matt Chester