December 25, 2004
A Rubbish Christmas
According to BBC News, people here in the UK will generate an awful lot of extra rubbish this christmas, including 24 million extra glass jars from all the cranberry sauce and mincemeat, 6 million christmas trees weighing 9000 tonnes, 83 km2 of wrapping paper, and over 4000 tonnes of aluminium foil.
Just recycling all the glass jars would save enough energy, apparently, to make 60 million cups of tea. Now, I make that one each. So if you do your bit for recycling this christmas, I reckon you deserve a cup of tea in return. Go on, treat yourself. Mine's a decaff coffee, it seems...
I'm less sure about christmas trees, though. I'm not convinced most people bin them, these days — tips tend to have a garden waste section which is just as easily accessible as the general rubbish bit, and they certainly don't fit in most dustbins. Anyway, surely we should be encouraging people to grow fast-growing trees in large numbers, and bury/compost them at the end of the year; surely this locks up carbon in the ground, taking some CO2 out of the atmosphere... Any passing environmental science gurus want to comment on that one?
Anyway, back to watching trash on TV and digesting copious turkey. :-)
Posted by James at 17:16
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