I’ve always wondered how much garbage people manage to pump out during the holidays. This graphic paints the picture and it’s a grim one to say the least.

The figure that really threw me for a loop was the number of Christmas trees that people buy every year: 50,000,000, of which roughly three fifths end up in a landfill. (I’m guilty of that this year, actually. I feel bad about it, in retrospect.)

Good lord, that’s a lot of wood. It’s a small wonder that we haven’t somehow completely run out of fir trees in the United States because of Christmas alone.

We do our very best to be environmentally friendly at our house – recycleable materials are used wherever possible. Newspapers and paper bags from grocery stores make great eco-friendly wrapping materials, if you can get your hands on them.