Toxic slime and gassy trees: 3 ways Christmas is busting the planet

There are many ways to ruin Christmas. A heated political debate with the in-laws. An ill-timed bout of the festive flu. A forgotten ingredient for the yuletide feast.

But if everything has gone miraculously well for you this festive season, POLITICO’s sustainability and data teams are here to lower your mood with a list of ways this fiesta of consumerism is wrecking the planet.

And where better a place to start than with that fragrant emblem of Christmas itself, the Christmas tree?

1. Gassy Christmas trees

Christmas can be a gassy affair, and the tree that stands proudly in your living room is no exception.

On average, a natural Christmas tree emits 16 kilograms of CO2 equivalent if it gets landfilled after use. That drops to around 3.5 kilograms if you turn it into woodchip or burn it as firewood.

But if you’re thinking of ditching the real tree and going for a plastic one, you might want to think again. Artificial trees have much bigger carbon footprints, emitting on average 40 kilograms of CO2eq. That’s not surprising because, newsflash, plastic is made out of fossil fuels.

Then there’s the issue of pesticides. Natural Christmas trees are grown fast and often in monoculture plantations, which aren’t known to be havens for biodiversity. To protect these trees from pests and diseases, pesticides — including the controversial weedkiller glyphosate — are often spread on them. Last year, German green NGO Bund got a few trees tested across the country and found traces of pesticides on the majority of them.

2. Toxic slime and other toy-based nightmares

As for what lies under the tree, the children’s toys don’t fare much better. According to a report from Toy Industries of Europe (TIE) out earlier this year, some 80 percent of the more-than-100 toys tested from third-party traders across 10 online marketplaces failed to meet EU safety standards, such as those set by the EU Toy Safety Directive.

Slime products — kids’ favorite and an adult’s nightmare — contained over 13 times the legal limit of boron, a chemical linked to reproductive health issues.

TIE puts that down to loopholes in the EU’s toy safety regime. While the bloc has the “strictest” rules on toy safety in the world, the lobby says, they don’t cover sellers from outside the EU when the sale is facilitated through an online marketplace.

“It’s getting worse because these platforms are becoming more and more popular,” Catherine Van Reeth, director general at TIE, told POLITICO. This wasn’t inherently a bad thing, she added, saying TIE’s members — which include LEGO, The Walt Disney Company, and Barbie-maker Mattel — also sell through online platforms.

“But the difference is that then you buy from a brand that you know and a brand that prioritizes safety, whereas we found that lots of toys that are being sold on online marketplaces are sold by third party sellers, often not from the EU, who don’t really care about safety.”

The data backs this up. In 2023, the EU was a net importer of toys from the rest of the world, according to Eurostat, with 80 percent coming from China. Nearly all toy chemical alerts issued in the EU in 2024 involved those coming from … you guessed it. China.

3. Eat, drink, travel and waste

Presents, travel and extravagant, meat-heavy meals: all common features of the festive season, and all an environmentalist’s nightmare. Let’s start with packaging waste. We’re talking thousands and thousands of meters of wrapping paper. According to the environmental non-profit Repak, Ireland generated about 97,000 tons of packaging waste at Christmas in 2022.

Then there’s wasted food. According to a study conducted by the French ecological transition agency ADEME in 2022, 83 percent of meals are prepared in excess quantities over the holidays.

Meat consumption, in particular, soars over Christmas. And that has serious environmental impacts. Agriculture contributes 40% of global methane emissions, according to the International Energy Agency, thanks largely to the methane that cows and sheep belch out (methane is one of the most potent greenhouse gases). Overall, livestock accounts for just under 15% of total global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the United Nations — about the same as steel and cement production combined.

Feeding livestock also requires vast tracts of land to be cleared to grow the soy, corn and other grains that fatten up your Christmas turkey or your celebratory loin of beef. Meanwhile, grazing of grass-fed cattle and sheep also often means cutting down forests or draining wetlands. All that has a double environmental impact: it destroys biodiversity and eliminates vital carbon sinks, contributing to climate change and nature destruction.

But when it comes to climate impact, nothing is worse than flying home for Christmas.

According to the International Civil Aviation Organization, a round trip from London to New York emits well over half a metric ton of carbon dioxide per passenger. The average person in Europe emits just over seven metric tons of CO2 per year. In other words, in two flights you’ve emitted nearly a tenth of the emissions the average European does over an entire year.

For a roundtrip flight between, say, Brussels and Berlin, the figure is just under 180 kilograms (0.18 of a metric ton) of C02, according to the the ICAO. Want to be greener? Take the train. Eurostar boasts that a train trip between Brussels and London emits 2.9 kilograms of CO2 per passenger, while a plane emits 23 times that, at 68.1 kilograms.

All very well for those expats with a short trip home for Christmas. But how can climate-conscious Americans in Europe get home for Christmas in a greener fashion? Currently they can’t — unless they’re prepared to sail across the Atlantic Ocean Greta Thunberg-style.

And with that, pour another glass of mulled wine and forget all about it. Joyeux Noël !