Celebrate Green Blog

by Lynn and Corey

We’ve been trying to get an interview with Santa for months, as we wanted to find out about his sustainability initiatives. After all, Walmart has them. Target has them. Surely Santa does too!

But when we hadn’t heard from him by November, we figured we’d have to wait until next year. Then much to our surprise, he emailed his responses, so here, directly from the world’s most famous guy in a red suit, are his views and what he’s doing about sustainability. Thanks Santa!

1. What efforts are you making in the area of sustainability?

I’ve been doing this for a loooooong time and I’ve always been aware of the environment because of course, I live on this planet too! And I have to fly through the sky at night. I remember trying to get to homes in LA when the air was so polluted it was hard for me to guide the sleigh. Glad that’s improved, at least in California.

Think about how much gas I’ve saved over the years by flying around the world with reindeer power. And with Rudolph leading the way, we don’t use any electricity either!

Then there’s my suit. I’ve been wearing the same one for millennia. It’s a little trick I have. No harmful dry cleaning chemicals for me!

We use up every single scrap in our workshop. There’s no trash collection at the North Pole after all, so we find a use for every piece of paper and wood left over from toymaking. That’s why our Christmas tree is covered with thousands of handmade ornaments, ho, ho ho!

2. Are your elves paid fair wages? Of course! We feed, house and clothe them during the seven months of the year we’re working on building all those toys. And of course they get to “test” everything, so a good part of most days I know they’d agree, that they’re having a lot of fun.

We’ve never had an elf quit on us in all our years and you should see the lines when we are recruiting! (Some do leave when they get married and have kids themselves.)

3. How about your food, is it organic? You’d never know it by looking at me, but I eat very healthy meals thanks to my Mrs. You’d think that all that flying and climbing down and up chimneys with a huge sack of toys on my back, I’d lose some of my tummy. But it just never happens. Of course, I’m not much for working out the rest of the year, ha, ha, ha, ho, ho.

On the other hand, if I didn’t have a big stomach, it wouldn’t “shake like a bowl full of jelly,” and I’d have a lot of disappointed children when they came to visit me at the mall.

In a nutshell, sustainability is something we should all be thinking about whether it’s Christmas or any other time of the year.

And to all a good night and a Merry Green Christmas!

Lynn Colwell and Corey Colwell-Lipson are mother and daughter and authors of Celebrate Green! Creating Eco-Savvy Holidays, Celebrations and Traditions for the Whole Family, and founders of Green Halloween®.