Let’s celebrate the magic of the festive season more sustainably. Small changes to your festive traditions can make a big difference for the planet.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year, a month when we get the family together, catch up with old friends and eat far too much.
As we start celebrating again this year, we’d love to extend the goodwill and gratitude the festive season inspires to Planet Earth. It’s the perfect time to consider how we can be part of the movement to create a more sustainable world.
Food
Food is at the heart of the holiday season. In Austria, families will be tucking into bratwurst and carp, turkey in the UK and pork meatball soup in Romania. But it’s no secret that we waste too much of our festive meals – around 88 million tons every year in Europe alone.
With just a little bit of planning, we can make our festive feast go a lot further and reduce its environmental impact. Buying local and seasonal vegetables is a great place to start. Organic, ethically reared meat – ideally from local butchers and/or certified by environmental organizations – comes with the smallest footprint.
For any food that’s no longer usable, it’s important to dispose of it in the right way. Recycling it, whether at home or a local collection point, means it can be used to generate energy or fertilize crops rather than rotting and producing methane in a landfill site.
Turning waste into power
In fact, turning organic waste into sustainable energy is an area of constant innovation.
An ever-growing array of organic materials, called ‘alternative feedstocks’, can be processed into circular, alternative fuels to power cars, trucks and planes. That can include anything from municipal waste collected from local bins to animal manure from farms.
Here at OMV, we already process used cooking oil into sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) and we’re constantly working with new materials at our Schwechat refinery, such as liquid from cashew nuts. In the future, we could even see discarded Christmas trees harvested to produce materials for renewable fuels.
Circular solutions like these are helping turn every scrap of organic waste into energy to power our daily lives, so it’s all the more important that we dispose of it correctly.
Recycling packaging
We can apply the same circular principles to packaging. One of the joys of the festive season is giving presents. But, as any parent will attest, gifts often come wrapped in layer upon layer of often non-recyclable plastic packaging. And, considering that 6.2 billion shipments will be delivered across Europe between October and December this year, that adds up to a substantial environmental impact.
Ireland alone generates around 100,000 tons of packaging waste over the festive period, equivalent to around 18 kg per person. Of this material, plastic can unfortunately be hard to dispose of, leading to the problem of plastic waste. Europe is more advanced than most regions in this field, yet still only 40% of plastic is recycled across the continent.
From paving slabs to 3D-printed street furniture, innovators around the world are coming up with ingenious ways to extend the lifespan of plastics. Our ReOil® chemical recycling technology is set to make another important contribution. It turns end-of-life plastic into chemicals which can then be used to create new plastics, replacing virgin material. By processing plastics that would be rejected by mechanical recycling methods, ReOil expands the range of plastics eligible for recycling.
Scaling it up will require a significant expansion of waste-sorting infrastructure, which partners like Tomra and Interzero are helping us achieve. But, just like food, plastic needs to be disposed of properly so it can reach our facilities – and that process might just start with you when you take the bins out!
If we tackle the waste issue from both ends, it ultimately means more packaging from under the tree and beyond being given a second life.
A more sustainable route home
Many of us travel long distances to see our loved ones over the holidays. EU residents made an estimated 92 million trips in December 2022 alone. By rethinking the way we make those journeys, we can reduce emissions while still being able to celebrate with a full house.
Trains and buses are the most sustainable way to get home, the former producing 66-75% fewer emissions than cars or planes. Sharing rides with friends is more fun, but it’s also a great way to reduce driving emissions, especially if it’s someone who has an EV.
However, those options might not be feasible for all of us. That’s why so much time and funding is being dedicated to making our road and air journeys more sustainable. This innovation means there are always options to help you travel with a lower CO2 footprint.
On the road, the EV charging infrastructure is expanding. With over 150,000 new public charging points installed in 2023 alone across the EU, the prospect of driving long distances to get home in an EV gets easier by the day.
In the air, meanwhile, SAF (which we mentioned earlier) is a renewable alternative to conventional kerosene fuel that contributes to over 80% lower carbon emissions over its lifecycle. We’re working with a growing range of airlines like Wizz Air, Air France-KLM, RYANAIR and Lufthansa to make sure your air miles come with a smaller carbon footprint.
Transport also plays an ever-more critical role in delivering our festive gifts each year. By pooling orders where possible, we can reduce the distances drivers have to make to get them to us. Logistics companies are coming up with more creative ways to reduce the emissions of their journeys, including optimizing delivery routes and using electric or hybrid vehicles.
A collective gift to the planet
The festive season is a time for celebrating, so circularity might not be top of the priority list. But even small changes can make a big difference when they add up.
That could mean choosing quality over quantity when it comes to gifts, wrapping them in newspaper rather than glittery wrapping paper or even making your own decorations to put on the tree. It could be as simple as using clothes, cars or mobile phones for an extra couple of years rather than seeking the latest upgrades. All of these actions help reduce pressure on natural resources and minimize waste.
If you’re keeping the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle in mind when planning your festivities, you’re already on the right track.
By celebrating with care and creativity, we can make this the season where joy and responsibility go hand in hand – because the best gift of all is a thriving planet.