Member Feature: Five Steps to a ‘Green’ Holiday Season with Help From St. Vinnie’s

St. Vincent de Paul Society of Lane County (SVdP) makes it easy to be green through the holidays and beyond – whether you resolve to save money, be kinder to the earth, help your most vulnerable neighbors, or all of the above! Read on to explore five ways to keep your holiday season “green” with SVdP all while promoting health, security, abundance and harmony in your community.

Save some green
First, you can save green by shopping the array of affordable merchandise and merry holiday décor at St. Vinnie’s 13 retail-thrift store locations in Oregon. That includes two stores in Springfield: 199 Q Street and 4555 Main Street.

With always-low prices plus weekly color-tag sales of 25 and 50 percent off regularly priced items, you’ll keep more green in your wallet and have more cause for celebration as you deck the halls and check the names off your list.

Be a green giver
You can also be more green by thrift-giving this holiday season – buying quality thrifted items for at least some people on your list. With every such purchase, you extend an item’s useful life, reduce waste, ease demands for new products and packaging, and curb your carbon footprint.

St. Vinnie’s nets many still-valuable items from society’s waste streams, and resells or recycles them to create jobs and sustainable revenue. Those funds then support SVdP’s vital human-services and affordable-housing efforts, which include managing seven properties for low-income renters right here in Springfield. You nurture this inherently green model of nonprofit “social entrepreneurship” every time you shop at St. Vinnie’s.

A worker at SVdP’s local recycling facility loads a machine that compresses expanded polystyrene (aka Styrofoam) into dense logs that can be used to make new products. 

Keep the environment green
SVdP also can help as you strive to keep your home clean and the environment green, starting by recycling those pesky blocks of expanded polystyrene (EPS, aka Styrofoam) left over from holiday gift packaging. Bring clean, #6-stamped EPS to any St. Vinnie’s donation center, and SVdP will recycle it locally to keep the environmentally troublesome material out of landfills.

Maybe your post-holiday cleanup will also include getting rid of older items to make way for newly received replacements. Perhaps your upcoming resolutions will involve tidying up and simplifying. Whatever the case, your tax-deductible donations of furniture, electronics, books, clothes, appliances, cars and more will help sustain SVdP’s charitable programs while lessening local landfill burdens.

Green-light your giving spirit
There is no better time than this season of giving to honor that evergreen bit of wisdom, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

As Lane County’s largest human-services nonprofit serving more than 35,000 people annually, SVdP provides many opportunities for you to help your neighbor. Every monetary gift to SVdP, and every item donated at St. Vinnie’s, helps build a better community with more jobs, housing, and life-stabilizing services for those experiencing poverty and homelessness.

Be green with … empathy
Why not decide right now to leave envy, anger, and other negative emotions behind, and instead embrace kindness, empathy, and selflessness heading into the new year?

Few things can bring about such a Scrooge-like transformation quite like placing others’ needs above your own, and many opportunities exist for doing that as a volunteer with SVdP. Some most-needed roles include meal preparation and daycare teaching support at First Place Family Center and Night Shelter Annex, and guest support at lifesaving Egan Warming Centers locations in Eugene and Springfield.

SVdP Deputy Director Bethany Cartledge and Executive Director Terry McDonald are pictured in one of the nonprofit’s 13 retail-thrift stores, which include two Springfield locations at 199 Q Street and 4555 Main Street.

To learn much more about all these ways to save, give, serve, and steward the environment along with St. Vinnie’s, visit www.svdp.us/green-holidays.