Tis the season to recycle – Image by East Sussex County Council
It’s December and we have officially began the season of Christmas celebrations and for the few remaining weeks leading up to 25th December I am going to write about planning and executing a Christmas that will bless both people and planet. Unfortunately what began as an idea to symbolically celebrate the birth of Christ; God’s most extravagant gift to His creation, with thanksgiving and sharing has, in many cases, become an obscenity of overindulgence, overspending and waste which leaves an after taste of anything but peace and good will.
If you do quick Google search you find that household waste increases by 30% at Christmas, over 21 million people receive at least one unwanted gift which equates to approximately $400 million spent on gifts which often end up in land fill and the excess of food which is thrown away is simply criminal. The statistics are really quite staggering. The amount of waste we produce increases by 30% at Christmas. Every year in Australia, nearly 5 million tonnes of food goes straight into landfill, and we get through about 150,000 kilometers of wrapping paper. That’s enough to go around the whole of Australia six times.18 Dec 2020 https://junkee.com/christmas-waste-environment
It is no wonder that Christmas is referred to as the world’s greatest annual environmental disaster.
https://weareearthcollective.com › Planet › Waste
It is clear that we need to break some habits and traditions if we have any desire to save both Christmas and the planet. I offer 3 principles:
1# Cut the waste
2# Take less of everything
3# Give back more
Fruit and vegetables the most wasted of Christmas foods. Image: Fruitnet.com
These principles can be executed in any number of ways and for the next few blogs I will make some suggestions on how they might work and what they might look like. Change occurs when people everywhere have the courage and self discipline to behave differently; it’s called critical mass and when it comes to the well being of the planet it is high time all of us got off the band wagon of hype, tripe and commercialism. And actually, I can promise you something, should you do this, you will not feel you have missed out on a thing!
Critical mass Definition & Meaning – Merriam-Websterhttps://www.merriam-webster.com › dictionary › critica…The meaning of critical mass is a size, number, or amount large enough to produce a particular result.
Way leads onto Way 