Christmas is quickly approaching and as exciting as that is, it’s also a very frightening time for climate scientists. The Christmas period pumps out unrivalled waste figures across the world. So this year, if you can follow just one of these tips, we can breathe a small sigh of relief for the future of our world.
1) Buy an artificial Christmas tree
We all know the story of Queen Victoria’s husband, Prince Albert introducing the Christmas tree to England from his native Germany, but do you know the crippling effects of the modern day Christmas tree industry? Every year a staggering number of trees are cut down, totalling 120 million worldwide. This in turn creates a carbon footprint of 2-3 billion kilograms of carbon dioxide. This is equal to about 20.8 trillion kilometres of driving. In this day and age with the current climate crisis, it is simply unnecessary to have an authentic tree when there are so many better, more sustainable options. With most fake trees lasting over ten years, not only is it far better for the environment to have one, but also more value for money.
2) Don’t send Christmas cards
In the modern era we are equipped with a near infinite number of ways to contact each other, which should by all accounts render Christmas cards completely outdated. However, it’s currently estimated that the UK sends 900 million of them every year. With a population of 67 million, that makes an average of 13 Christmas cards being sent per person. How we as a nation have managed to rack up such ridiculous numbers is one question, but why we only send 500 million e-cards each year is a more important one. With such a large arsenal of social media and messaging apps, we each have to do our part to cut down the paper waste we are taking part in every Christmas period. As nice as it is to receive a Christmas card, I’m sure your friends and family would appreciate a well written text message just as much and the environment will be all the better for it.
3) Turn off your Christmas lights at night
Everyone has a neighbour who likes to go overboard with the Christmas decorations, and I know this instills a competitive rage in you to outdo them, but please take just a moment to consider the amount of electricity you’re using to do so. By no means am I saying not to decorate your house, but there is no need to keep your lights on all through the night. Before you go to bed, just switch them off, else you’ll be racking up an electric bill that could rival Amazon themselves. Who is there to impress at three in the morning? Not only is this incredibly environmentally wasteful but also monetarily, with Which? statistics suggesting that we spend £252 million as a nation on lighting up our houses every year. Come on now, swallow your pride and turn off your lights before you go to bed and you’ll be doing the whole world a favour.
4) Don’t throw out your leftovers
This year in the UK, 2,986,203 people used food banks. This is the highest recorded number in our country’s history. Which is why it’s all the more pressing this year to use all the food you cook. Whether that be eating it yourself throughout the following days, or giving it away to less fortunate people in your community, we all have a duty to reduce food waste this year. Approximately 66% of people admit to buying too much Christmas food which ends up in the bin, and this binned food is equal to 42 million possible meals, enough to feed two thirds of our population. With numbers like these, it’s a wonder why food banks are even necessary, when we’re all just as capable of helping people ourselves. So this Christmas, don’t throw out that leftover turkey or those spare parsnips, offer them to a neighbour, and you’ll be surprised by the impact that this small act of kindness can have on both the environment and the less fortunate.
5) Reuse Christmas wrapping paper
I’m sure we all had a weird aunt that would go around collecting up all the old wrapping paper on Christmas morning. Well while we may have given her a funny look in years gone by, in our current climate crisis, it’s almost necessary to avoid throwing out as much wrapping paper this year. During the Christmas period, people throw out 384,400 kilometres of wrapping paper, enough to go round the earth nine times over. As much as it’s hard to convince an 8 year old not to simply tear into his nicely wrapped up new lightsaber toy, as adults we can try out best to try and save paper off of some of the bigger presents we open this year.
