Xmas is killing the Earth

Christmas is killing the Earth according to a report released by the Australian Conservation Foundation. The report calculates the environmental impact of Australia's Christmas spending on gifts such as books, confectionary, clothes, alcoholic beverages and electrical appliances. From Australian Conservation Foundation:

* Every dollar Australians spend on new clothes consumes 20 litres of water and requires 3.4 square metres of land. Last Christmas, Australians spent $1.5 billion on clothes, which required more than half a million hectares of land to produce.
* Approximately 42 gigalitres of water (or 42,000 Olympic sized swimming pools) were used in the production of our Christmas drinks last December. Most of this water was used growing barley for beer and grapes for wine.
* Before we even plugged in the DVD players and coffee makers we bought last Christmas, they had created 780,000 tonnes of greenhouse pollution. A third of this was due to fuel consumption by the manufacturers of the appliances; greenhouse pollution embodied in steel contributed to a quarter of the pollution.
* If you spend around $30 on chocolates and lollies this Christmas, you'll be consuming 20kg of natural materials (even if the box of chocolates weighs only 1 kilogram) and 940 litres of water.

(Thanks Ju)