Thanksgiving Special Green Tip #49: Green Holiday Shopping

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Let's get right into Green Tip #49 because I know you'd rather spend time with friends and loved ones.

Tomorrow Americans partake in a time honored tradition that truly embodies the spirit of the American culture: getting up really early and waiting in line in freezing temperatures to save an extra $10 on a pair of jeans. While I'm sure that you can find other blogs that will give you some tips on what to buy in order to be an environmentally responsible shopper, The Impractical Green Resource is not other blogs. No, I'd like to give some tips on how to make your Black Friday shopping experience as Green as possible.

First off, you're going to want to address the issue of waiting in line in the cold. While it might not necessarily be freezing where you live, it's a safe bet that wherever you are, it's not exactly going to be very warm in late November at 3 AM. Some people bring electric blankets, some use electric hand warmers, some have electric space heaters. I think you see where I'm going with this. We use electricity a lot for situations like this. Here's my suggestion on how to cut back on energy use. Go to the hospital, find someone with the flu, and try to catch it from him or her. If you get a fever, you'll be burning up and you won't need any electric heaters or anything.

Now, the type of disease you get doesn't matter that much. I'd suggest H1N1, just because it's so chic right now. And there's nothing more embarrassing than having last year's flu. You'd be so out of style.

Additional bonus: if you make it really obvious that you're highly contagious, you might just scare some people out of their coveted positions in line.

Another aspect of waiting in line for amazing deals is that some people (the diehards) will actually camp out days in advance. If you'd rather not waste gas by driving to some far off destination to go camping with your family, you can convince them that this is what you're doing. Just keep them in the tent the entire night and they might just believe that you actually went to North Dakota to go camping. Just say that there's a blizzard out and they can't leave the tent until the storm passes. Then when the store does open, sure they'll be mad, but they'll forget about how mad they are when you buy them a brand new Xbox.

So that about wraps it up for now. Don't forget to come back tomorrow and I'll talk about a Green alternative to watching football all weekend.