One of the best lines from Paul Kelly’s song How to Make Gravy is: “Have a merry Christmas, I’m really going to miss it, all the treasure and the trash.”
While piles of Slinkies, scented candles and beach cricket sets might seem like a rite of passage, unfortunately for the environment, research from the Australia Institute suggests when it comes to Christmas presents, in the balance of trash versus treasure, we are giving each other too much of the former. Nearly a third of Australians expect to receive Christmas presents they will not use or wear, amounting to $921m dollars’ worth of presents that will end up in landfill.
