What is The Carbon Footprint of Christmas?

Before we start, let's get back to basics. What is a carbon footprint?

Everything we do releases carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere, and it's these greenhouse gas emissions that are contributing to the greenhouse effect, trapping more heat in, and making the planet warm. All of which leads to climate change and the increase in frequency and extremes of 'weird weather' and the impacts that that has on ecosystems and human lives.

We all have a carbon footprint. The average footprint for an individual in the UK is around 9-10 tonnes (this figure will vary depending on how it's calculated and exactly what's included, but let's work with a round number of 10 tonnes for ease).
There's a great podcast episode with Jo Hand, co-founder of Giki Zero here if you want to hear more about carbon footprints!

• 4kg CO2e per adult for a low carbon scenario
  - The food is great but none is wasted
  - Presents are thoughtful but not necessarily expensive, and you've kept the receipts so you can return any unwanted gifts.
  - You have LED fairy lights.
  - You only send a few cards to people you haven't seen in ages and don't want to lose touch with.
  - You stay home and video call any far-off relatives.

• 280kg CO2e per adult - UK average
  - Presents - the average spend in the UK is £600 per adult. In this scenario 20% are unwanted (we receive 81 million unwanted gifts each year in the UK!)
  - We spend around £220 more than usual on food, and these figures are based on the assumption that a third will be wasted (shockingly we throw away about a third of our food all year round)
  - Fairy lights burn through about 45kW/h (not clear if these figures are for LED lights or regular ones)
  - The average adult posts about 20 cards, and most of their impact is from delivery
  - We typically travel about 50 miles each, above what we would normally travel, and mostly by car
• 1500kg CO2e per adult for a high carbon scenario
  - £1400 spend on presents, with a 'wasted-ness' factor of 30% and you don't keep the receipts
  - Loads of non-LED lights
  - Post 200 large cards
  - 500mile round trip in a 'thirsty' car to see relatives

The good news is that there are lots of things we can do to easily reduce our footprint but not the fun factor!
There's a post here with 12 ways to reduce the carbon footprint of your Christmas, but I wanted to share this as well...

Christmas can be a tricky time to make sustainable(ish) changes for lots of reasons.

Firstly, it only happens once a year, so it can feel like starting again each year and it's hard to build on small changes we've made a year ago.
Secondly there's all the traditions and societal expectations that come with this time of year.
And then there's the fact that at Christmas, it tends to not just be us and our household that's involved, there's the wider family, friends, colleagues, school etc etc as well.
Change can be hard at an individual level, and it can certainly be hard to get the rest of the household on board at times, but changing the 'hearts and minds' of in-laws, work colleagues etc etc can feel impossible.

And that's ok, because that's not our 'job'.
If we want to make changes at Christmas to make it a bit more eco-friendly it's super important to focus on what IS in our control. Because a lot of it won't be. We need to make peace with that!
I've put together a little Venn diagram (because who doesn't love a Venn diagram!) with some ideas of things that might be in our control, and things that might not be.

Is this helpful?
What's on your lists?
Let me know!