Led, the solution to reduce the environmental impact
However, costs and environmental impact are significantly reduced if LED lights are used for all the decorations, the incidence of which on bills is a few euro cents a day. It is also possible to reduce consumption and waste by using timers that limit the duration of lighting, and by reducing the number of lights on the Christmas tree by using reflective objects such as mirrors and silver or golden balls.
Selectra, the free service that compares and activates electricity, gas and internet offers for companies and individuals, has also produced an estimate on the consumption generated by Christmas lights: Italian families will spend over 30 million euros this year. According to Selectra, lighting up houses for 6 hours every day leads the country to consume around 1,600 MWh per day, or over 46,000 MWh in the period from 8 December to 6 January.
The expenditure: 30 million euros in one month
Spending for a family on the Protected Market for the Christmas period is around 1.70 euros in electricity bills, almost one euro more than in 2021, when the estimated cost was 0.77 euros. This taking into account that each family uses at least a chain of 300 LED lights to illuminate the tree and a LED tube to decorate balconies and windows externally.
Other light sources can be added to these, which lead to the overall emission of 651 tons of CO2 equivalent every day, almost 19,000 tons of CO2 equivalent for the entire lighting period. These are the same tons of carbon dioxide emitted by over 6,000 cars in one year.
According to Selectra’s calculations, it would be enough for all Italian families to keep their decorative lights on for one hour less a day (therefore five hours a day) to reduce the environmental impact by about 3,000 tons of CO2 equivalent for the entire period, i.e. over 100 tons of CO2 equivalent per day. At an economic level, around 5 million euros saved in total for the Italians.