Most of Britain will have exchanged presents today wrapped with as much gusto as the Christo team. Our family made a small dent in our personal carbon footprint by not using paper to conceal gifts, just putting them in reusable plastic bags.
This got me thinking just how much paper got used at Christmas 2009 in the UK. One supplier in Kent has had an 18 per cent increase in orders for wrapping paper, making a total of 35 million metres (enough to cover 9/10ths of planet Earth) and their Christmas cracker orders are up 21 per cent to 26.6 million (to say nothing of the paper hats and awful puns). The Royal Mail estimate that 700 million Christmas cards will be sent via the delivery service this year, and the paper usage includes envelope and card for each item. If an average card and envelope uses, say, 0.5 metres then that's 350 million metres. Maths has never been my strong point, but that's an awful lot of paper.
So, Christmas 2009 in the UK is like Christo wrapping the world several times over, and that's just from one country. Maybe the dominant green campaign needs to stop people wrapping presents (at least with printed papers) as an awful lot of trees must be being sacrificed for the annual splurge, rather than simply using recycled paper to prepare gifts for family and friends.
Friday 25 December 2009
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