From an environmental perspective, Christmas is a time of excess: waste paper; food; travelling to family and friends; and extra electricity for cooking, heating and lighting. If you want to keep your carbon footprint in check, this is the time of year to be extra careful. To put this in perspective, the average adult at Christmas will use 280 kg CO²e [1]. This is equivalent to driving almost 400 miles in an average car, or 800 miles in a smaller more efficient car! This article offers ways in which to cut down on your carbon emissions and save money at Christmas, without spoiling the fun.

Paper

A lot of paper is wasted at Christmas. It is estimated that over Christmas as much as 83 square km of wrapping paper will end up in UK rubbish bins, enough to cover an area larger than Guernsey [2]. We also post vast amounts of Christmas cards and many end up going to landfill. Here are some ideas to improve your paper usage:

1. Recycle Christmas cards and wrapping paper – make sure it all goes in the recycling bin, not the general bin. If we all recycled just half of the 8,000 tonnes produced we’d save 25,000 trees [4].
2. Reuse Christmas cards – cut them up and use them as gift tags for next year’s presents.
3. Don’t buy paper Christmas cards; send electronic cards by email instead. Most of the carbon footprint of a Christmas card is from the delivery.
4. Open your presents carefully. You may be able to reuse the paper again for wrapping gifts next year.
5. Don’t buy gifts you have to wrap. Get vouchers or e-vouchers instead. This also reduces waste as the recipient will be able to choose something they want rather than receiving a gift they don’t want and will throw away.

Food

We consume a lot of food and drink at Christmas. The amount of waste we send to landfill is shocking. 30 to 40 per cent of all festive food is wasted by farmers, shops or families [6]. It is not just the food that is wasted but the packaging as well. Turkey foil wrap alone will create 3,000 tons of waste [6]. If you need more food for thought, check out these friendly food tips:

1. Get an organic veg box delivered for Christmas. This saves traipsing through a packed supermarket and you know you have environmentally friendly veggies with minimal packaging, for your Christmas roast.
2. Buy locally reared meat to cut down on food miles.
3. Don’t forget to take lots of reusable bags with you to the supermarket to pack your goods into.
4. Only buy what you need. It is too easy to buy lots of food at Christmas to feed family and friends, only to find that you have bought far too much again and have to throw it away.
5. Check ‘use by’ dates when you do your last Christmas food shop. Try to pick things with longer shelf lives and fresh items that can be frozen if you don’t get round to eating them.

Travel

At Christmas, we typically travel 50 miles each above what we would do anyway [1]. This is usually because we make more of an effort to visit our family and friends over the festive period. There are things you can do to minimise your transportation impact on the environment:

1. Use Skype to contact distant relatives. If you both have Skype you can talk for free for as long as you want, and can also watch a live video of each other if you have a webcam set up. It’s like having them there in your home.
2. Think about what journeys you will have to make over the Christmas period. Can you combine journeys so that you reduce your mileage? For example, do you need to visit shops that are in a similar location, can you visit them both in the same day rather than drive out separately to both of them. The same goes for visiting friends at Christmas.
3. Can you car share? If you can, pick up friends or relatives along the way if you are all meeting at the same place.
4. If you will be racking up the miles this Christmas, make sure you check your tyre pressure to reduce drag and use less fuel.
5. Buy gifts from your local high street. If you’re in walking distance that is even better and saves burning fuel in your car.

Electricity

Electricity is used in vast amounts at Christmas. We cook more, spend more time at home with the heating on and have lots of lights on including the lights on the Christmas tree. In the average household, the fairy lights will burn through about 45 kilowatt-hours [1]. Here are a few ways to save this Christmas:

1. Have LED fairy lights. LED Christmas lights use up to 90% less electricity than conventional incandescent bulbs [3]. This will save you significantly on your energy bills if you tend to leave your fairy lights on all day and night.
2. You may find the heat generated by the kitchen on Christmas day will help to heat other rooms in your home, so you won’t have to have the heating on as well. Remember to switch the heating down or off in the morning.
3. Defrost your freezer before Christmas so it will work more efficiently and create more space to store leftover food, so that it doesn’t go to waste [4].
4. Use candles for your Christmas meal and forget the electric light bulb for a couple of hours [5].
5. Try not to use over-sized pans for the vegetables you cook, otherwise you will be using more energy than you need to, to heat the water.

References

[1] Berners-Lee, M (2010) How Bad Are Bananas: The Carbon Footprint of Everything. Profile Books Ltd.

[2] Waste Online (2005) Cutting Down on Christmas Waste http://www.wasteonline.org.uk/resources/InformationSheets/ChristmasRecycling.htm

[3] Ecocentric (2010) Green Christmas – Top Ten Tips http://www.ecocentric.co.uk/acatalog/green-christmas.html

[4] The Guardian (2007) A- Z of Tips for a Green Christmas http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/ethicallivingblog/2007/dec/12/toptipsforagreenchristmas

[5] Lights 4 Fun (2010) Save Money on Electricity Bills http://www.lights4fun.co.uk/buying_guides/save_money/index.aspx

[6] The Independent (2005) Throwaway Christmas: Britain Set to Dispose of Three Million Tons of Waste http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/throwaway-christmas-britain-set-to-dispose-of-three-million-tons-of-waste-520492.html