What is the Effect of Christmas Lights on the Environment?

LED bulbs use significantly less power than conventional light bulbs.

The Yuletide love of light is nothing new. Illuminating the darkest months of winter has been part of the Christmas tradition for hundreds of years. But, with the increasing trend for over-the-top light displays, many have started to express concerns about the costs to the environment. Aside from light pollution bemoaned by the astronomy community, just one house can generate around 25 metric tons of CO2 over 25 nights.

Wasted Electricity

One of the idiosyncrasies of Yuletide is that many self-imposed rules about conserving electricity and saving money seem to disappear. All the hours spent telling children to turn off lights when they leave a room are conveniently forgotten. Instead, Christmas lights are left on for days at a time. The electricity used in powering the season's lights results in the wasteful burning of coal, oil and natural gas. The unwanted byproducts of this can include smoke, acid rain, and carbon dioxide emissions.

Changing to LEDs

LEDs (light-emitting diodes) last 20 times longer and use 80 percent less electricity than normal lights. A 2007 McKinsey report suggested that moving from normal bulbs to the LED variety was one of the easiest ways the public can reduce emissions. This was followed up in spectacular fashion by those responsible for New York's Rockefeller Plaza tree in 2009. The 30,000 LEDs found on the 8 km of wire saw the amount of energy consumed fall from 3,510 kilowatt hours per day to 1,297 khd. Some states are now offering recycling amnesties where shame-making old Christmas lights can be swapped for LEDs.

Light Pollution

The combined light pollution caused by millions upon million of tiny bulbs is enough to obscure the stars over the Christmas holiday season. The Campaign to Protect Rural England and the British Astronomical Association's Campaign for Dark Skies are warning that people living in areas subject to extremes of light pollution might only glimpse one or two stars within Orion on any one night. In a light pollution-free sky, people might see dozens of stars.

Christmas Police Violation Tickets

One environmental group in particular has taken a dim view of extravagant displays of Christmas lights. The Energy Justice Network set up the SANTA initiative--Sustainability Action Network and Toy Alliance--to ask residents to issue its downloadable "Christmas Police Violation tickets" to any neighbors insisting on switching on massive light displays. The tickets tell the receiver that, "Your electricity consumption may be putting you on the Naughty List."

Offsetting Damage

In the U.K., London's West End features more than 3 km of festive lights. The Liberal Democrat party has said that a small forest of trees would need to be planted to offset the carbon emissions produced by those lights over the season. The actual figures to relieve such a carbon footprint amount to growing 215 trees for a century.

References

• The Telegraph: Housebling
• The Observer: Should We Pull the Plug on Festive Lights?
• Campaign to Protect Rural England: Second Chance to Catch the Stars
• The Week: Are Christmas Lights a "Crime"?
• London Evening Standard: Put That Christmas Light Out!