There are many resources on the internet to help us have a less wasteful Christmas. There are also many statistics that are thrown around about how much waste is produced by the festive period every year. Regardless of whether the number is 100% accurate or not, waste
is waste so let's get an idea of how devastating the situation is, in the UK particularly. We can split this into 3 rough categories - plastic decorations, food waste and wrapping.
Some of the statistics surrounding Christmas waste are astonishing. According to Wildlife and Countryside , around 114,000 tonnes of plastic packaging will be thrown away and not recycled in the UK this Christmas. Let alone all the fake trees that some people will only use once or twice.
In terms of the food, well I don't mean to be a downer but it's quite appalling. If you didn't know already, the average family in the UK discards about 1/3 of the food they bought for a variety of reasons. Well over four million Christmas dinners are thrown away every year – that’s equivalent to 263,000 turkeys, 7.5 million mince pies, 740,000 portions of Christmas pudding and 11.3 million roast potatoes. Let that sink in. Over 11 million roasties!
Why is reducing wrapping paper so important? The proposed estimations is that there is enough paper each year to gift-wrap the island of Guernsey. What's worse is that so much wrapping paper was bought in the UK that in 2013 it was reported it would be long enough to stretch to the moon. People are convinced that because the product is paper-based that it can be recycled and the truth is it cannot. The colourful paper tends to have a layer of foil, or glitter or something that isn't very environmentally friendly. There are so many alternatives including furoshiki, reusable gift bags, vintage tins, tea towels and scarves. This will be an entirely seperate post so keep your eyes peeled.
See this Instagram post for our tips and tricks on zero waste decorations this year. Keep up to date with our social media for the latest zero waste topics.