Live Sustainably!
A third of the world’s population is roughly the minimum amount of people who celebrate Christmas. This usually equates a large Christmas dinner for them. Unfortunately, most families end up wasting the food they cannot eat - In an average country the gases given off by the wasted food totals up to 3 times as much pollution as the carbon pollution given off by cars.
In the UK, 5.5% of carbon dioxide emissions are due to Christmas dinners. The carbon footprint of a Christmas dinner is on average 20kg. That is around 51,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions from food alone. Three-quarters of the worlds total carbon footprint is due to food processing and production - from that total, 60% is due to the production of turkeys, just for Christmas dinners.
Since Turkeys are premade and are made on a mass scale, there must be many left over after. If, for example, a third of the turkeys are wasted, that means there is 20% of the 60% of the carbon dioxide produced, released into the atmosphere for nothing. Then that 20% of wasted food produces more greenhouse gases - therefore increasing the percentage by about another 10%, not including the wasted food by the average family. After all the food gets wasted it, it is placed into a landfill - which produces far more noxious gases can carbon dioxide, further impacting the environment.
"5.5% of carbon dioxide emissions are by Christmas dinners."
Concerned? Here are some ways in which you can make your Christmas dinner more eco-friendly:
· Buy your products from nearby and try to buy less food rather than more, it reduces the carbon footprint.
· If possible, try to grow some of your own veg!
· Try and buy foods that are packaged in materials that can be recycled.
· Smaller drink bottles amount to more waste than bigger bottles, therefore try to buy bigger bottles.
· Try to avoid serving people with paper or plastic plates.
· Try and re-use old plastic bags or use recycling bags.
· Aim to put the food peelings and wastes in your home compost.
- Shaan Kara
The Carbon footprint of a Christmas Dinner