THE HOLIDAY FOOTPRINT

Every year, 90% of Americans celebrate Christmas. This holiday is a time for families to gather, socialize, and appreciate each other. It’s a day associated with great food, happy memories, and cozy feelings. The world seems to get into the Christmas spirit, but it’s also damaged by the Christmas activities. The way we celebrate Christmas is often not sustainable, but there are ways to celebrate without harming the environment.

WHAT CAN WE DO TO REDUCE WASTE THIS HOLIDAY SEASON?; GRAPHIC BY SAMIRA KUNATE

When you think of your home during the holiday season, what do you imagine? Many of us think of a beautiful tree in our living room decorated with ornaments and lights. If you’re looking to buy a new tree this year, consider ditching the plastic ones. The United States imports around 23 million plastic Christmas trees every year. These trees are a pretty big threat to the environment, but why is that? Chemicals and Microplastics leak from them, and can enter soil, water, and the air around them. This makes the trees harmful to the earth even when they’re put to rest in a landfill due to the nature of how their microplastics spread. With plastic trees, the holiday spirit isn’t the only thing in the air. Carbon emissions join the joy in the atmosphere. Plastic trees produce 10 times more carbon in their lives with shipping and manufacturing than real Christmas trees. These carbon emissions warm the earth by trapping heat in the atmosphere, which negatively affects all living things and prevents your white Christmas from happening. In addition to that, it also lowers the quality of the air we breathe. While plastic trees take over 500 years to decompose in a landfill, real trees can be composted, turned into mulch, or in Cedar Rapids, a fish habitat. There are many places to dispose of your Christmas tree in Iowa. If you’re looking to switch trees, avoid trashing your plastic one. In an interview with Clear Creek Amana High School student Elliot Cisco (Sophomore), Cisco advised us to donate or possibly try to sell our trees to avoid producing unnecessary waste. So if you have a plastic tree, it’s definitely possible to switch to a real one. But where do we get them? One way to get a live tree is to buy from a local Christmas Tree farm. Buying from a farm is a great way to stay sustainable while supporting the local economy and businesses. There are several tree farms to choose from around here. The closest farms are in the cities of Ely, Oxford, and Marion. If you’d rather cut down your own tree, you’re able to! In Iowa, you’re able to get permits to cut down your own Christmas trees (with restrictions and rules). You can purchase these permits online. Cutting down your own trees avoids the chemical runoff of farms, but is also a lot more work. 

There is potential to make finding a tree a family bonding activity, which should surely elevate the joy one feels this time of year! When that December chill arrives, we all get excited, dreaming about all the joy Christmas will bring. For most of us, a lot of that joy comes from giving and receiving gifts. Everyone loves gifts, but sometimes we don’t get the right kind of gifts. Sometimes, especially in large families, gifts are not thought through or personal. Maybe clothes are the wrong size or someone was very wrong about their friend’s interests, or something happens and the gift just isn’t wanted. These unwanted gifts cause a lot of waste. Every year, 5 billion pounds of Christmas gifts land in the landfill. Most of these gifts are actually from returns. When a business is given a returned item, oftentimes they just trash it. Processing returned products takes time and money, so it’s easier for some businesses to just throw away returned items. Around a quarter of all returned items are thrown away because of the complications of reselling unwanted items. Returning gifts can also pollute the earth with the carbon emissions from shipping. Gifts are a very important part of Christmas, and nobody wants to get rid of that, but there are some changes we can make collectively to get Christmas to be a little more eco friendly. Oftentimes, gift buying is impulsive and not thought about as much as it could be. 

To make the environment and gift receivers happy, try to think about what the person you’re buying for would really like. If you get something a little more personal for someone, their appreciation will be much greater than it would have been if you just loaded them with gifts that don’t mean much to them. If your friend never shuts up about wanting a fushigi, for example, maybe get them that fushigi and a couple other small things you know they’ll like instead of more random items you bought on impulse. We can also shop locally to reduce the amount of items shipped to our home. Gifts for other people aren’t the only problem, though. Everyone loves buying gifts for themselves, but sometimes we buy too many gifts from the wrong people. During the holidays, overconsumption is a big issue that leads to extra pollution and waste. CCA High School student Sam Descourouez (Freshman) mentioned how over the past few years, companies are advertising even more and trying to make money off of your Christmas joy. Descourouez additionally brought up how companies like Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft released things at the end of the year to make us buy them for Christmas. He believes this affects us as students because many people our age play video games and will be influenced to buy these new things. A solution to this is trying to be mindful and grateful for what you have instead of jumping right on new things. This year, gifts don’t have to go away, but they do need to change.