How to Have a Low-Carbon Christmas

Consumers have an environmental responsibility to favour real Christmas trees over their artificial equivalents, according to a new low-carbon Christmas report released by British governmental organisation the Carbon Trust.  This is because the carbon footprint left by artificial trees is a minimum of ten times greater, it says. 

To put the difference into perspective, the trust compares the way artificial trees affect the environment to that of toasting over 5,000 slices of bread, or carrying out a 120 mile journey in a typical family car.  Natural tree CO2 emissions, meanwhile, equate to just over 400 slices of bread, or a sub-10 mile car journey in the same type of vehicle.

Christmas: Impact on the Environment

The Carbon Trust’s Christmas tree emissions guidance forms part of a wider instruction on how to minimise the impact of Christmas on the environment.  Or, as it puts it:  “top tips for cutting out our carbon impact over Christmas without cutting out the festive fun.”

According to the trust, CO2 emissions related to consumers increase six per cent during December, when more items are being bought (and thus more journeys are being made to obtain them, or more time is being spent surfing the net), more food is being eaten, and more car journeys are taking place overall anyway, to relatives’ houses and other destinations. 

Christmas Carbon Emissions

Here are all the Carbon Trust’s Christmas emissions reduction tips in summarised form:

• Select real Christmas trees over artificial Christmas trees, and ensure they’re properly disposed of after Christmas (i.e. burnt and scattered, as opposed to being thrown away)
• Cover saucepans with lids to ensure energy efficient food cooking takes place
• Ensure empty wine bottles and other Christmas-associated drinks containers are recycled
• Employ strategic food shopping methods to minimise food wastage
• Carry out 30 degree clothes washes

Shops have seen more artificial trees being bought this year – a trend linked to the state of economy, amongst other factors.  Tesco, for example, announced earlier in December that it expected to have shifted 300,000 artificial Christmas trees by the end of 2009. 

“Yes, you can reuse them, but you would have to reuse [them] for ten Christmases...to be better than a real Christmas tree”, the Carbon Trust’s Vanessa Pine said of artificial trees.

“Anything made from plastic, derived from oil, which then ends up in landfill is going to be damaging”, she added.