With Christmas fast approaching, people will be responding in all manner of ways. Most households will be determined to keep the tree in the loft until December, but shopping is another matter, as leaving it all to the last minute is a risky business that makes a regrettable failure to get the goods you want highly likely.

In an age of e-commerce, more and more people are ordering goods online and having them delivered, avoiding the crush of the busy shopping centre and making the purchases they want at their leisure.

Dreaming Of A Green Christmas?

However, this does raise a question; most Britons are usually left frustrated in their wish for a white Christmas - although the official Met Office definition is more generous these days and requires just one snowflake to fall anywhere in the country - but how about a green Christmas instead?

It’s not just that treating the environment better will prevent white Christmases from being a thing of the past for future generations; it is that there is a need for action across all parts of life and the economy, which will include the whole business of packaging and transporting goods from A to B.

In the case of packaging, using items like eco friendly postal boxes is a great start. These are made from recycled material, which is a significant consideration. While it may be better than non-biodegradable material, wood-based packaging like paper and cardboard is often not recycled at all, but ends up in a landfill with so much else.

How Bad Is The Problem?

An article by Business Waste indicated just how bad the problem can be. It revealed that 227,000 miles of Christmas wrapping paper alone are thrown away each festive season, which is the equivalent of 108 million rolls or, if stretched out end-to-end, not far shy of the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

The startling statistics continued: each tonne of wrapping paper, if recycled, could save 17 trees and 18 sq ft of landfill space, with 50,000 trees being cut down to make the wrapping paper used in Britain each year. Recycling all the paper that gets thrown away would use 70 per cent less energy than making it afresh.

Inside each wrapped parcel is the packaging, which provides some similarly sobering statistics when it comes to waste, as 300,000 tonnes of card packaging are used over the festive season. That means loads more waste if it is all thrown away and not recycled.

Business Waste makes these points as it is involved in recycling the wrapping paper and packaging. What we offer is packaging that emerges from recycling carried out by such firms that aim to make a difference. They can only do so when packaging providers commit to using recycled material in bulk.

Why Recycling Makes Such A Difference

The above statistics show that doing so when posting goods will have more than a marginal impact, greatly increasing sustainability at the time of year when paper and cards are used in the greatest volume.

Indeed, the article also notes that the material itself matters; wrapping paper that is purely paper can be recycled. But sometimes paper is wrapped using materials that contain foil or plastic, which cannot be recycled easily, if at all. This is why using wood-based materials matters. Indeed, recycled packaging can then be sent to get recycled again.

There will be times when the packaging used may contain plastic out of necessity, such as when something very fragile needs the protection afforded by bubble wrap or foam. But in many instances, shredded paper is more than adequate to keep it safe.

Meeting The Green Challenge

Some may argue that all this is not enough; that many of the goods inside the sustainable packaging have not been made by eco-friendly means, or are items that won’t be recycled when they come to the end of their working lives. That will sometimes be true, but it is a matter of consumer choice and many will seek to buy goods that are eco-friendly.

In the end, everybody has a part to play in making Christmas better for the planet. This is true for packaging firms, just as it is for those who could reduce carbon emissions when transporting goods by using cleaner fuels.

This Christmas may or may not be a white one where you live, although this is bound to be more likely somewhere up in the hills further north than in a town or city further south. Either way, while the wish “may all your Christmases be white” won’t be something anyone can guarantee, it makes sense for everyone to take control of the things they can influence.