What can be done about Santa’s carbon footprint?

Now that Christmas has arrived, the topic of the environment will not likely be on the top of everyone’s agenda – and yet, Christmas is the time that the biggest individual global polluter comes out to work. I’m speaking, of course, of Santa Claus, who it transpires has a very sizeable carbon footprint. How does Santa emit so much, and what can he do to become more eco-friendly?

Santa’s carbon output was calculated in a 2011 survey carried out by the green retailer, Ethical Ocean, who reported that his trip across the world covers approximately 122 million miles, during which he will release 69.7 million metric tons of carbon. In one night, Santa is responsible for almost as much carbon as the country of Qatar generates annually. So where is all the carbon coming from?

The toys for good children result in roughly 68.4 million tons of emissions

Ethical Ocean imagines Santa’s workshop as comparable in size to the factories owned by Nike. Thus, we’ve got 983,000 metric tons of CO2 coming from the North Pole. They also consider that Santa also has a team of reindeer to pull his sleigh. Reindeer, like cattle, produce methane through normal animal digestive functions, and the gas is 21 times as potent as CO2. When you factor in how much food the reindeer will need to consume to get through the night, that’s a lot of digesting to do, and it produces roughly 41,000 metric tons equivalent of CO2.

The most significant contributor to Santa’s carbon footprint, according to Ethical Ocean, is the toys. From the initial production and assembly, packaging and wrapping, and then eventual disposal, the toys for good children result in roughly 68.4 million tons of emissions. If you’re bad, Santa typically leaves a lump of coal in your stocking – but that means that he needs to mine it first (releasing 37,000 metric tons equivalent of methane). If we assume that 20% of all children in the world wind up on the naughty list, you’re looking at just under 200,000 metric tons just waiting to be burned.

There are approximately 2.8 billion children in the world, meaning that the carbon cost of Christmas for each child is roughly 0.03 metric tons. It doesn’t look like a lot in itself (it’s roughly equivalent to using a treadmill for three hours a week, or flying just 66 miles), but that’s before we factor in the rest of the holiday – the travelling by train, car and even plane to spend time with those we love, the purchasing of our own presents, etc. It’s a huge carbon output for a single day, and especially for a single person.

He needs to look to see if he can bring a bit more eco-friendliness to the North Pole

So, given that Santa is responsible for producing so much carbon, is there anything that he can do to help reduce or counteract the damage – festive magic aside? A simple solution can be found in the things Santa leaves – coming up with some greener alternatives to coal for the naughty kids (Ethical Ocean suggest pinwheels), and aiming to use toys made from recycled materials. If he provides music or video games, it is increasingly easy to opt for the digital version, and this would also result in decreasing the weight of his present haul. And it’s not just Santa – families can help reduce emissions by leaving him locally sourced milk and cookies (or even soya milk, since soya beans absorb rather than emit CO2). It’s a small gesture, but every little helps in the long run.

It was suggested by academics that an improved sleigh would also be a valuable tool for reducing carbon. An environmentally-aware Santa could capture some of the methane emitted with specially-designed reindeer backpacks, operating in much the same way as carbon clusters – this could be disposed of later, and would prove useful in aiding sleigh flotation while Santa was on his travels.

Santa’s operation has been running well for centuries but, in an age of increased environmental discourse, he needs to look to see if he can bring a bit more eco-friendliness to the North Pole. But, given his track record, we may need a bit of a Christmas miracle to see any substantial reduction to his carbon footprint.