The Christmas Energy Crunch (part two)

by Christine McLaughlin

The picture at the top of this blog sums it up: Christmas lights are largely used by businesses to lure us into spending money. They are another element of the festive consumerist trap we have locked ourselves into. It's not a great picture but I think you can just about see that the Christmas lights in the photo spell out the word "acupuncture". I don’t know how many passers by have been persuaded to enquire about acupuncture at my local Chinese health centre by their Christmas lights display, but I do know that the Climate Talk research I mentioned earlier this week found that a major contributor to our excessive carbon output over the Christmas season is extravagant light displays.

Christmas lights look pretty but at a domestic level they can produce an extra half ton of carbon dioxide per house. Climate Talk recommends a small display of LED bulbs which use only 5kg of CO2 per household. I’m using plain white lead free candles for my lighting display this year – I’ll be placing them in differently sized and shaped glass jars. I’m not very keen on baubles and tinsel and so on: they’re all made in sweat shops from non-renewable materials and shipped or flown over here at a massive cost to the environment - so I’ve already been scouting for holly to stick up around the room. That’s pretty environmentally friendly especially when you consider that the holly was growing out over the pavement, posing all kinds of health and safety issues!

Although I don’t have accurate figures to quote, it’s clear that businesses, especially the retail sector, use more elaborate light displays than householders, thus producing even more CO2. Furthermore, Trafford Council have thrown caution to the wind of climate change and switched on the municipal Christmas lights very early this year.

I was surprised to see the Christmas lights in Urmston town centre had been switched on by the third week in November, so I checked Trafford MBC’s website and discovered that the lights had been switched on in Sale on November 22nd and in Altrincham on November 13th.

Furthermore, I was shopping in Sale this morning when I noticed the Christmas lights had been switched on at 11am. Putting on lights at that time of day is equivalent to switching on your heating then leaving your front door open. You can’t see them properly in the daylight so the effect is totally wasted.

It’s our council tax that pays for this blatant waste and disregard for the planet’s long term future and it all adds up to a substantial increase in our borough’s carbon footprint, so I’ve emailed Councillor Susan Williams, the Leader of Trafford Council to ask for her thoughts on the matter. I’ll let you know how she responds and if anyone else would like to email her, the address is councillor.susan.williams@trafford.gov.uk.