Sustainable Birthday Gifts

Continuing with the theme of the gifts I received as a result of my eco- mission, I want to explain these pictures.  At the top you see the use-it-again birthday card Kathy gave me.  She had gotten it from the very-enivronmentally aware woman who runs the Alzheimer's day program.  The idea is that you can use both the envelope and the card again by putting a small personal note inside.  Of course, that means that you don't choose the card, but it's a nice idea to pass it on the way we've been doing for years with gift bags.

I'd told them that I really didn't need anything, so I thought the best thing would be just to have a meal together, and Suzy said she was abiding by that until she happened to see, at the book store next door to Greens, a book about sustainable shopping.  The irony is that it says on the inside cover "Manufactured in China."  "How sustainable is that?"  Suzy asked.  Just now I googled sustainability and books made in China, and this came up:

The new book “A Year Without ‘Made in China’” details business journalist Sara Bongiorni’s efforts not to buy any products made in that booming country for 12 months — from sneakers to mousetraps, toy swords to cargo pants.