Green Options

What are you going to change about Christmas 2009 to reduce your GHG emissions? Have you thought about the issues that effect your carbon footprint? Now that Christmas has passed and we get back to less festive times, its maybe time to look at things.

I was prompted to post on this by an evening drive I took with my family to Lawley Street (-25.780785°  28.242231°) in Waterkloof, a suburb of Pretoria, South Africa.

Lawley Street is some 1.8 km long and is the address for approximately 90 large suburban houses, many of them are diplomatic corps & embassy residences. This normally quiet suburban road was filled with cars crawling up and down its length, all their to see the houses glittering in Christmas lights installed  each year by the house owners.

Lawley Street Christmas Decorations

A simple calculation, admittedly involving many assumptions, gives good estimates of the carbon footprint of “The Lawley Lights”.

LEDs are known for their long life and energy efficiency, but there are some problems with the holiday string versions that I was not previously aware of.

Now that Thanksgiving and Black Friday have come and gone, people and stores everywhere are gearing up for the next big holiday season: Christmas.

While kids are trying to be extra good to avoid coal in the stockings, many grown-ups are looking to deck the halls and display, in every way imaginable, that they have the spirit of the season. Thanks to technology, that expression of “spirit” nowadays means decorations that rival multi-million dollar movies in extravaganza, brilliance, complexity, dazzle…and expense.

I remember as a child my family’s annual ritual of visiting a neighborhood in which every single house and lawn (and tree and fence and shrubbery and…you get me) was covered, blanketed, buried in decorations. Lights, blinking or not, white or multicolor. Contraptions aplenty, such as the Santa with sled and reindeer troop that traveled around the roof on a track. I swear the place was so bright you could probably see it from space.

Now as an old Scrooge, I have watched with amazement and alarm how Christmas decorations have exploded in size, number, and power. Simple lights, wreaths, or even figurines in the yard have become virtually passé, too simple to be properly “spirited.” Once the weather turns cold and children’s thoughts turn to presents under the tree, you can count on seeing towering inflatable characters, animated setups, and lights so bright they blind hapless passersby.

For example, the Wal-Mart website lists this cheery array of outdoor lawn décor such as: Santa Crash in Tree, Santa Claus on Chopper [i.e., motorcycle], 7-Foot Ferris Wheel [yes, it spins], Animated Teeter-Totter–Santa and Reindeer [yes, it moves], Nativity Scene, etc., etc., etc. All inflatable, all highly bright, all under $100. Quite a steal for showing off all that holiday spirit, right?