Every year, during the final weeks before January rolls around again, retailers and automakers go to great lengths to persuade us to buy as much stuff as our credit cards will possibly allow.

Daytime television shows helpfully try to identify the hottest toys and gadgets of the season, department stores try to lure in even the most budget-conscious shoppers with loss leaders, and television ads proclaim there’s never been a better time to get a better deal on seemingly everything.

Admittedly, it’s difficult to resist these overtures. Modern marketing, is, after all, the art of attempting to convince people that they simply must have things, even if they’re not necessary for survival or even comfort. But let’s face it: Our obsession with material wealth is trashing the planet. It’s just not sustainable. Researchers have calculated that it would take one and a half earths to replenish the resources that we are thoughtlessly consuming at the present rate.

If we want America to remain America the Beautiful, we need to clean up our act, and stop being so wasteful. Unfortunately, as long as any part of the federal government is controlled by Republicans like Joe Barton of Texas (who famously apologized to BP a few months ago), there’s no hope for moving forward any kind of legislation to strengthen environmental protection.

That means it’s even more important for those of us who care about good stewardship to take matters into our own hands. There’s no better time than the holidays to commit to reducing, reusing, and recycling, since that’s when we collectively buy a lot of new stuff. There’s also a fourth R: repairing.

Often, when appliances or gadgets break, our response is to trash it and go buy a replacement. This is incredibly wasteful. A tremendous amount of energy, capital, and labor goes into the making of each appliance or gadget we own. To appreciate just how much, we have to trace a product’s origins, from extraction to production to distribution to consumption. Typically, when an appliance or gadget breaks down, there’s only one particular component that’s gone bad, and it can be fixed or replaced. Unfortunately, manufacturers of stuff have made the cost of buying new stuff cheaper than the cost of buying old stuff. They can do this because they don’t have to worry about the responsibility of disposing of old, broken stuff. If taking back old stuff were their responsibility, you can bet it would be a lot easier and cheaper to get old stuff repaired.

Fortunately, in many cases, old stuff can be repaired, or given new life, at home. For instance, most of us have computers that are about a half-decade old and aging. I recently extended the life of such a computer by replacing the hard disk drive with a lighter and more resilient Solid State Drive (SSD).

An SSD is like a super-sized flash drive … it’s faster and more durable than an HDD because it has no moving parts. On the SSD that I purchased, I installed copies of Windows 7 and Kubuntu. I now have the latest and greatest software on my computer, and it runs several times faster.

There’s no law that says you have to go out and buy something new to use as your Christmas, Hanukkah or Kwanzaa gift. You just might make a family member or friend’s day by repairing a beloved toy, gadget or appliance that’s broken.

Here’s another idea. If you are shopping for new stuff, and you happen to be an Amazon.com customer, look for products that come in Frustration-Free packaging. You’ll save time and trouble unwrapping your new stuff as well as cutting down on the amount of packaging littering your living room.

In the end, though, it’s the little things that add up. Taking canvas bags to the store and refusing the false choice of “Paper or plastic?” Installing LED light bulbs that last an incredibly long time and are energy efficient. Taking advantage of food waste recycling by sending chicken bones, pizza boxes, orange peelings, and table scraps to the compost center instead of the landfill.

But if you do just one thing, educate yourself. Go to www.storyofstuff.org to learn about where stuff comes from and what happens to it after we throw it out. Host Annie Leonard will take you on a guided tour that you won’t soon forget. After you’ve watched, share the video with everyone you know.

Andrew Villeneuve is the founder and executive director of the Northwest Progressive Institute, a Redmond-based grassroots organization. Villeneuve can be reached at andrew@nwprogressive.org.