I've been saving this for almost a year. Sometime after Christmas last year I came across this report that claims to calculate the hidden environmental costs of our--OK, not really us, but those in Oz--conspicuous Christmas consumption. The Australian Conservation Foundation summarizes some of the findings thusly...
- Every dollar Australians spend on new clothes consumes 20 litres of water and requires 3.4 square metres of land. Last Christmas, Australians spent $1.5 billion on clothes, which required more than half a million hectares of land to produce.
Solution? Give your loved one a gift certificate to a clothing optional resort. Although this may very well create negative aesthetic externalities for others at the resort.
- Approximately 42 gigalitres of water (or 42,000 Olympic sized swimming pools) were used in the production of our Christmas drinks last December. Most of this water was used growing barley for beer and grapes for wine.
Solution? None. My in-laws are in town for 10 days...drinks are a necessity.
- Before we even plugged in the DVD players and coffee makers we bought last Christmas, they had created 780,000 tonnes of greenhouse pollution. A third of this was due to fuel consumption by the manufacturers of the appliances; greenhouse pollution embodied in steel contributed to a quarter of the pollution.
Movies on demand. Same waste of time, no transportation to get the movie to you.
Merry Christmas all.
