PORTLAND PRESS HERALD • December 19, 2023
What is the carbon footprint of these Holidays and their many lights and candles? A Christmas tree: large incandescent lights, 13.15 kg of CO2; mini incandescent lights, 19.17 kg of CO2; and LED lights, 2.26 kg of CO2. The type of tree purchased to be lit by those lights matters, too – 3.1 kg/year of CO2 emissions for a natural tree versus 8 kg of CO2 per year over the course of the six-year life span of an artificial tree. How about the Menorah candles for Hanukkah? The standard paraffin candles many buy emit, over the eight nights, just 0.27 kg of CO2. Beeswax candles are deemed carbon neutral – they emit CO2 recently absorbed by plants and then transferred to beeswax. But don’t use olive oil lamps – those emit 10 times the CO2 of paraffin candles. And try digital cards instead of the 2.65 billion holiday cards sold each year in the U.S. Or there is a holiday you can substitute that has no energy use or emissions, Festivus, made famous in a 1997 Seinfeld episode. ~ Jeff Thaler, Yarmouth