Christmas, a time for family, friends and excessive waste. The main focus of Christmas is love and gratitude as we spend time with family and loved ones, however, no one really seems aware about how much they are harming the environment during this season. All the gifts we wrap, cards we write and turkey's we cook has a detrimental effect on the world we live in. Many people do not think twice about the harm they are causing to the planet when they carelessly don’t recycle and create mass waste each year.

In 2014, the Royal Mail delivered around 150 million cards and parcels during the Christmas season. It is also estimated that 1 billion Christmas cards could end up in the bin after December 25th. Not only are cards a problem, wrapping paper is too! Over the Christmas period, 83 square kilometers of wrapping paper will be thrown out or burnt – enough to wrap the island of Jersey. This just shows the amount of waste that the UK alone produces every Christmas, these worrying numbers could even rise as more and more gifts are given and people become more careless.

Its not only the gifts that are a problem, cooking turkeys is also bad for the planet. In 2014, around 6,711 tonnes of fresh turkey was cooked and 12,472 tonnes of  frozen turkey was cooked. Not only does this bring ethical argument by vegetarians and vegans into the picture, it highlights the grossly high demand for meat in the UK. Also, of course the turkey needs to be wrapped when its cooked so every Christmas about 4,200 tonnes of aluminium foil is thrown away. This again leads to damage to the environment as people do not recycle or think about the amount of waste they are producing.

The worst statistic by far is that 125,000 tonnes of plastic packaging will be thrown out instead of recycled. This highlights how lazy and uncaring people are as they choose to not help the world, they have access to recycling but just cant be bothered to put in the effort. This just shows how detrimental the Christmas season can be to the planet as landfills are going to be full of waste that could easily be recycled. Be aware this Christmas and for many to come, keep your footprint green instead of tarnishing the beautiful earth we live on.

All statistics courtesy of envirowaste.co.uk

 Image courtesy of gazettelive.co.uk

Pippa Watson

Ursuline Academy Ilford