As early as September, T&T becomes abuzz with Christmas shopping, with “sales” spanning a three-month period well into the New Year. Online shopping has exploded exponentially within recent times, with some local courier services reporting a 100 per cent increase in cargo shipping and shopping frenzies like Black Friday and Cyber Monday catching on locally with Internet bargain hunters. Consumers and banks are much too happy to benefit from consumerism, but have we paused to calculate the cost of shopping on the environment?
The Australian Conservation Foundation is one of many organisations across the world devoting time and resources to quantifying the impact of Christmas on the environment. According to a report, The Hidden Cost of Christmas, the estimates for the retail spending were based on Australian national figures for December 2004, with calculations of environmental impacts based on 1998-1999 data and “remain a reasonable estimate of current environmental impacts.”
Books and magazines
According to the report, “In December 2004 Australians spent $612 million on books and magazines. The production of these products created approximately 430,000 tonnes of greenhouse pollution—the equivalent of a year’s pollution from 85,000 cars.”
The report further stated that “book and magazine purchases also consumed 416,100 tonnes of materials (eg waste paper, ink cartridges, packaging), and more than 40,000 hectares of land remained disturbed, including plantations, regrowth native forests and old growth forests in Australia and overseas.”
To put things into perspective, T&T’s land mass is approximately 512, 800 hectares. Therefore, approximately seven per cent of our land resources would have been affected if we had to supply the resources to produce these books—and we have only dealt with one country.
Wrapping paper, packaging and cards
USNews.com reports that Americans spend approximately $3.2 billion a year on wrapping paper. That presumably includes gift bags, which, according to Hallmark, is the preferred method for wrapping gifts. Similarly, the average shopper was expected to spend $172.74 on gift cards in 2014. Can one imagine how many thousands of trees would have been used to satisfy our gift-wrapping needs?
If this figure alarms you, consider that independent.co.uk reported in 2006 that “about 83 square kilometres of wrapping paper will also be thrown out or burnt—enough to gift-wrap the island of Jersey. You can also add to that 125,000 tons of plastic packaging.”
Alcoholic beverages
During the holiday period, friends and family often enjoy a range of alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. However, to the demise of our environment, used beverage containers are not properly disposed of, or ideally, recycled. T&T produces approximately two million beverage containers daily. These notorious pollutants can be seen clogging rivers, drains, and along highways and streets.
To curtail this problem, this year the EMA launched the ICare recycling project with the intention of reducing the number of beverage containers entering landfills. ICare recycle bins have been placed at convenient locations throughout the country with plans for more bins at malls, supermarkets and other high usage areas across T&T.
Apart from the improper disposal of beverage containers, the environmental impact of producing alcoholic beverages should be also considered. In December 2004, Australians spent about $900 million on alcohol. The volume of water required to produce this amount of alcohol goes beyond what is actually bottled; most of the water indirectly consumed is used for growing barley for beer and grapes for wine. The report states that approximately 42 gigalitres of water were used in the production of these Christmas drinks last December, enough to fill 42,000 Olympic sized swimming pools!
Household appliances
Rampant production of appliances and technological gadgets is proving to be a nightmare for the environment. The ability of earth to reabsorb plastic and metallic elements back into the soil leaves landfills heavily burdened. This problem is compounded by the fact that before these appliances are even plugged in, thousands of tonnes of greenhouse gases are generated, while significant quantities of materials are used for manufacturing. The report states that “about a third of the greenhouse pollution generated by household appliances is due to direct fuel combustion by the manufacturers of the appliances, while greenhouse pollution embodied in steel contributes to a quarter of the greenhouse emissions.”
The above is intended to provide a snapshot of spending habits and how the environment is impacted by the growing consumerism associated with Christmas. It is crucial that T&T begins to put a dollar value on every environmental resource to fully appreciate its contribution to the economy. If we allow consumer habits to go unchecked, we will fail to safeguard our future resources for generations to come.
For further information about the EMA’s recycling project visit the website www.ema.co.tt