The Environmental Impact of Christmas

With barely any restrictions and the Filipino love for the holidays, Christmas is back in full swing this 2022 after years of lockdowns caused by the pandemic.

Along with the Christmas season, comes traffic, gifts, parties, and overflowing amounts of food come to the pollution and the environmental impact of the holidays on our environment.

In a study done by Stanford University, between Thanksgiving and New Year, Americans throw away an estimated 25% more trash than any other time of the year. This means an extra 25 million tons of trash.

Aside from this, there is a huge number of plastic that comes with shipping, packing, wrapping, and the gifts themselves. In the US, only an estimated 9% of plastic is recycled despite being placed in the recycle bin.

Aside from this, returning gifts can be just as wasteful. The shipping process for returning items contributes around 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide annually, while e-commerce returns emit 14% more waste as compared to in-store purchases as indicated in the Enrocnmetal Capital Group’s 2020 research.

The report also says that an estimated 5.8 billion pounds of returned items simply end up in landfills annually.

Gift wrapping paper can be cute and fun but it also hurt the planet. According to the Clean Air Partnership, an estimated 8,000 tons of gift wrapping paper, or around 50,000 trees are used to wrap presents annually.

There are several ways in which Christmas could be more sustainable. Gift-givers can opt to use recycled wrapping paper, opt to shop locally to reduce the contribution of carbon emissions, make homemade gifts, or only buy items that they need.

Source: ABC News, CNN