The Klere Steer on a Sustainable Christmas #2

We previously ran some numbers on your Christmas lunch, and now turn our attention to the trees – assuming between 6-8 million trees are sold each Christmas, the Klere Nature Impact Metric estimates a UK national impact of some 14,000 biodiversity units – this is the metric’s measure of the suppressed biodiversity on the approximately 2,800 hectares harvested annually, with trees on average 10 years old. This is very substantial – similar to a large multinational company.

On a household basis, one tree has about the same footprint as one Christmas lunch – so for a family of four, lunch is in fact about four times the impact of the tree. It’s easy to feel the impression of how much ‘nature’ you have brought into your home when you look at the tree: to realise the impact of what is on your dinner plate is four times more, adds a new perspective.

And this then can help us think about where we might reduce our impact – something for a New Year Resolution possibly.