November 2021: Christmas challenge
According to a study by the waste management company Biffa, the UK creates 30% more waste than usual over Christmas. This includes an estimated 227,000 miles of wrapping paper and 1 billion cards that end up in the bin. An estimated 20% of gifts – some 120 million items – will be headed for landfill on Boxing Day!
So pick one of more of the following challenges to do this month as part of your Christmas preparation – or make up one of your own.
According to a study by the waste management company Biffa, the UK creates 30% more waste than usual over Christmas. This includes an estimated 227,000 miles of wrapping paper and 1 billion cards that end up in the bin. An estimated 20% of gifts – some 120 million items – will be headed for landfill on Boxing Day!
So pick one of more of the following challenges to do this month as part of your Christmas preparation – or make up one of your own.
- ACTION: Ask your family if, this year, they’ll wrap gifts in reusable material. A pillowcase or (clean) sock conceal just fine, and you could spruce it up with a twine bow if the recipient would enjoy that. Or go full Furoshiki and (re)use cloth to elegantly wrap presents.
- ACTION: Communicate early that you’d like to receive an experience – an activity – unless there’s a specific item you know you need. Don’t let family members guess if they’re likely to gamble on a thing (‘stuff’) that you don’t particularly want or need. How about a foraging course?
- ACTION: Link Christmas to your non-materialistic, hopeful New Year’s resolution. Intend to learn a new language or an instrument? Ask for an introductory lesson, or a voucher.
- ACTION: Try a local organic wine for Christmas this year. We need to stop the widespread use of pesticides to help combat the biodiversity crisis, and through your wine glass is perhaps a rewarding way to assist. Quoins, near Bath, farm conscientiously:
- ACTION: Consider sending e-cards this Christmas where the equivalent cost of a physical card is donated to a charity of your, or the recipient’s, choice.
- ACTION: Introduce a nut roast in place of a meat for your Christmas meal, especially if red meat normally makes an appearance. This article reports that ‘Avoiding meat and dairy products is the single biggest way to reduce your environmental impact on the planet’.
- ACTION: Chocolate is a significant part of the Christmas experience for most but so often it comes with a frivolous amount of packaging. Think Ferrero Rocher and selection boxes with their plastic trays. A potential swap would be to source Christmas’s chocolate from a zero-waste shop, who tend to stock locally handmade confectionery.
- ACTION: Try to make your gifts double up as charitable donations by buying from charities. For example, if you have a cyclist in the family you could buy them a useful accessory (high-vis clothing, puncture repair kit) via the charity Sustrans, which aims to make it easier for people to walk and cycle.
- ACTION: Request a tea-tong or tea-egg and make the switch to loose-leaf tea. Tea bags can go off with the food waste despite them normally having some plastic in them, but better still to avoid recycling altogether.
- ACTION: Christmas crackers are crackers. Don’t buy them?
- AMPLIFY: Tell your friends and family about the challenges you’re taking this month and ask them to join in.
