The holiday season can often be fairly wasteful – with Christmas cards, wrapping paper, boxes and leftover food adding to higher amounts of waste going to landfill.
However, the Sustainability team are on hand to offer some advice on how to reduce your environmental impact this Christmas break!
1. Use recycled paper.
The UK uses enough wrapping paper to wrap Big Ben 260,000 times and the London Eye 50,000 times over the holiday season! To reduce this waste – avoid using shiny or glitter covered wrapping paper where possible, so that it can be recycled after use.
Source: recyclenow.com
2. Freeze your leftovers
We throw away 7 million tonnes of food every year and with Christmas a prevalent time for overspending and overeating, a huge amount of food can go to waste. Make the most of your leftovers and freeze them to eat at a later date. Follow an advent calendar of waste tips here.
(Remember- vegetable and other food peelings can be used as compost also!)
3. Going away for Christmas?
Switch off everything and uplug it from the socket! This can save you energy, money and have environmental benefits.
4. Keep your thermostat low.
Rather than putting your heating on high during the colder winter months, lower your temperature gauge and use it as an excuse to wear a Christmas jumper instead. The Guy’s Campus Operations team turned off the heating in their office last week, wearing Christmas jumpers for charity and raising a great £55.50 for Macmillan Cancer Support!
5. Recycle your Christmas tree!
After the Christmas period, many Christmas trees will end up in landfill. However, many Local Authorities and garden centres will set up tree collections in January, where trees are shredded into tree clippings and used in woodland parks and other areas. Go to your local boroughs page for more information about how you can recycle your tree.
(Note – Although artificial trees are more environmentally beneficial due to their longer life span, they cannot be recycled as they are made of many various plastic parts).
Rhianne Menzies, Sustainability Projects Assistant
