Christmas – your recycling facts and figures
Christmas is a time when we all enjoy excesses and Warwickshire County Council is this year calling on local residents not to dump all those excesses into the rubbish bin.
To try and give an idea of just how much waste is created over the festive season the county council has put together some facts and figures.
Cllr Martin Heatley, Warwickshire County Council’s Portfolio Holder for the Environment, said: “Hopefully everyone will think about the environment when disposing of their extra waste over the festive season.
“The only thing we haven’t yet measured is the amount of methane (a greenhouse gas more powerful than carbon dioxide) generated by the people of Warwickshire eating those 130 tonnes of sprouts….!”
Food
This Christmas, a whopping 8,666 turkeys will be sold in across Warwickshire, weighing a massive 477 tonnes
A mountainous 130 tonnes of sprouts will be bought in across Warwickshire during the Christmas period
During the festivities, each person will eat an average of 14 sprouts – consuming a hungry total of 7.28 million sprouts in Warwickshire!
A scrumptious 1,516,666 mince pies will be bought from Warwickshire supermarkets this Christmas
Across the Warwickshire last Christmas, we consumed almost 47,666 jars of mincemeat, 104,000 jars of pickles and 56,333 jars of cranberry sauce all packaged in glass, but only a small percentage were recycledCards and wrapping
A massive 8,840,000 Christmas Cards will be delivered across Warwickshire (17 for every man, woman and child) could end up in bins across the UK
On average, each Warwickshire household splashes out £23 for Christmas decorations each year – that’s more than £5 million in total!
Trees
A prickly 69,333 Christmas trees will be bought this year in Warwickshire, most of which will be thrown away generating over 1,386 tonnes of additional rubbish
Around 25,000 hectares of Christmas trees are currently growing in the UK – that’s over twice the size of the City of Manchester
Recyclables
Between 20% and 30% more glass jars and bottles are collected over the Christmas period
We could use an extra 6.5 million bottles and glass containers, and 4.3 million drinks cans during Yuletide across Warwickshire
General
The festive period is thought to result in three million tonnes of waste across the UK
Every year households in England throw away the equivalent of two and a half million double-decker buses (over 25 million tonnes), a queue of which would stretch from London to New York and back twice– isn’t it time to make that New Year’s resolution to recycle more?
Each person in England will throw away an average of 50 kilos of rubbish over Christmas that’s an extra 26,000 tonnes of waste across Warwickshire
For detailed information on the scheme or further help and ideas on recycling over the festive period visit http://www.recyclenow.com or http://www.woodland-trust.org.uk/cards