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Christmas Waste
With all the excitement of parties, presents and delicious food, not many of us stop to think about the amount of WASTE created at Christmas. It is estimated that in the UK we make a massive 3 million tonnes of rubbish over the festive period, and sadly much of this ends up dumped in landfill sites.
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Action |
| One billion Christmas cards (17 for every man, woman and child) could end up in bins across the UK this year. One tree is needed to make about 3,000 cards. |
Reduce the number of cards you send. Use email or text messages for people that you don't see; for those that you do why not simply say "Merry Christmas"?
Buy recycled cards or make your own.
Keep some of the cards you receive this year to re-use as gift tags next year. Take the rest to be recycled at WH Smiths or Tesco's. To find out more about this scheme, supported by the Woodland Trust, click here.
Schools in North Somerset can put cards out for collection with their paper and they will be delivered to Tesco's for recycling. |
| We will use an extra 500 million aluminium drinks cans over the festive period. |
All these materials are easy to recycle using your kerbside collection - just make sure they are clean.
To find out more about recycling in your area, use the links below:
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| Nearly 3,000 tonnes of aluminium foil will be used to wrap Christmas turkeys. |
| We will use an extra 750 million glass bottles and jars over Christmas and the New Year. |
| In the UK we use about 83 km2 of Christmas wrapping paper. |
Take wrapping paper off carefully and you can re-use it next year.
Paper that does not survive the excitement of Christmas day intact can be recycled. |
| We will use about 8 million Christmas trees, most of which will be thrown away in January, generating over 12,000 tonnes of rubbish. |
Real Christmas trees can be turned into valuable compost. If your council collects garden waste (e.g., from a green wheelie bin) chop your tree up and put it out for collection. In other areas look out for shredding events. |
| Around 125,000 tonnes of plastic packaging will be thrown away over Christmas - that's the equivalent weight of more than 50,000 polar bears!! |
Think of presents with no packaging at all e.g., a series of riding lessons, a trip in a hot air balloon!
Make your own presents - the personal touch is usually much appreciated.
When buying presents try to avoid ones that are excessively packaged.
Don't forget charity shops - they often have unusual gifts at very reasonable prices. |
Christmas Cards in Schools
Many primary pupils take 30 or 40 Christmas cards to school to distribute to their friends. Teachers often find unopened cards in the classroom months after Christmas, while many parents comment that the cards their children bring home are never opened! The table below shows how much paper, cardboard and money are wasted.
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primary pupils |
number of cards (a) |
paper / cardboard waste (b) |
£ spent (c) |
Bristol |
29,834 |
596,680 |
3.58 tonnes |
£44,751 |
South Glos |
21,838 |
436,760 |
2.62 tonnes |
£32,757 |
North Somerset |
14,675 |
293,500 |
1.76 tonnes |
£22,012 |
TOTAL |
66,347 |
1,326,940 |
7.96 tonnes |
£99,520 |
- (a) based on an average of 20 cards per pupil
- (b) 1 small card + envelope weigh 6g
- (c) based on an average of £1.50 per pupil
We encourage pupils in Bristol, South Gloucestershire and North Somerset to reduce this waste and think of other ways of exchanging Christmas messages. Click here to find out about the schools that participated in this campaign in 2005.
We Wish you a Merry Christmas
To help you remember how to have a Merry Christmas without making too much rubbish we have recycled the words of a popular carol. Click here to find out more!
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