 where other cities around the world might decide to make a new cathedral and thereby increase their carbon footprint, York has decided to make do with the same old minster for now well over 500 years. And rather than build a new city wall, we have been muddling through with the same old city wall since the 12th century. And this demonstrates, I think, that sometimes it's okay to reuse and mend old things rather than keep buying new ones. York also recently announced an ambition to make the historic center of the city car free by 2025, so in just five years time. And although the details of how we're going to achieve this remain pretty scanned to the moment, this illustrates, I think, that answering those kind of these kind of big environment sustainability questions are difficult. And it's for this reason for this event tonight, we want to focus not on those big questions necessarily, but what we can do at household level to make our lives more sustainable. So a couple of words on the format for this evening. Many of you have already kindly submitted questions in advance. And we will try to answer as many of these as possible this evening. But if we don't get your questions, please don't worry, we will post detailed answers to all questions on our that have been submitted on our website over the coming weeks. And on that website, you will also be able to post any pictures that you might like to send us to illustrate your green Christmas ideas, either by using the hashtag York Green Christmas, or by emailing yesy at York.ac.uk under the subject line York Green Christmas. We will also award prizes for the best of these, although when I say prizes, I mean, highly environmentally sustainable virtual Christmas stars. We will also be taking questions from the audience this evening. So if you'd like to ask us a question, please post these using the Q&A box, which you should see at the bottom of your screens. And if you'd like to ask the question yourself, please just use the phrase, I would like to ask followed by your question, and we'll be able to turn on your mic and everybody will be able to hear you. So it just remains for me to introduce our panel of experts and of course, as we must do all public events to point out the fire safety measures for this evening, which are as follows in the unlikely of event of fire, please leave whatever building you're currently sitting in by the quickest and safest route. That was easy. So then our panel, let me start with Sarah. Sarah, would you like to introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Sarah West. I'm the sense director of the York environmental system. I'm not even that. Oh, man, it's been a long day. So I'm SEI York's centre director. I'm sorry, Darryl. No, you're fine. Are you going to introduce the cat as well? Yes. So that's my cat, Tessa. She's old and very needy. Brilliant. Thank you. Esther, would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah, sure. So I'm Esther and I work at St Nick's Environment Centre in York. You did a lovely introduction about us. So we do all kinds of things. So including our, as you said, very unnatural reserve. We also have volunteers. We have mental health service, eco therapy. We do sustainability events. We have a recycling team. All kinds of things like that. Brilliant. Thank you. Joe, would you like to introduce yourself? Hi, I'm Joe. I'm a PhD researcher at the University of York in the Environment and Geography Department. My PhD isn't related to the greenhouse gases of food or food waste, but it's something that I'm really interested in. And I've been involved in projects looking at this and various outreach projects as well in the past. Brilliant. Thank you. And finally, Bryce. Yeah, hi, everyone. So I'm Bryce Stewart. I'm a senior lecturer in the Environment and Geography Department and the director for engagement and partnerships. By training, I'm a marine biologist. So any questions about fish, about the ocean in general? Yeah, I'll do my best to answer them. Brilliant. Thank you very much. So we'd like to start with a general question to all the panelists so we can get to know you a bit better. And that question, perhaps starting at the same order, starting with Sarah, do you have a favourite Christmas tradition? Yes, we like to put stockings out regardless of age. So my 94-year-old grandmother gets the stocking and the babies in the family get stocking. And it has always a satsuma and some nuts in the bottom bits and chocolate coins, if you're lucky, and useful things. So Father Christmas in our house gives us things like toothbrushes and socks and crayons, I think is what we've ordered this year. Brilliant. Thank you. Esther. Do you think one of my traditions is wearing this hat? So me and my husband fight over this hat. And I was saying before, sometimes I forget it's Christmas hat because it's nice and warm. So yeah, that's my tradition. Excellent. Thank you, Jo. So on Christmas day, about 7pm, when we're starting to get a little bit peckish again, we like to have all the Christmas leftovers in a sandwich with gravy. That's very similar to our traditions, yes. And Bryce? Yes. So you may or may not be able to tell, but I'm an Aussie. So Christmas for me is having a Barbie. And particularly Boxing Day, I'm from Melbourne. So my Christmas tradition, if I can do it, is to go to the Boxing Day Cricut Test Match at the MCG and to eat turkey and cranberry sauce sandwiches. That's what it's all about. Brilliant. Well, as I said, and so staying on the subject of food and perhaps we'll stay with you, Bryce. So we have a question submitted. What one thing could I do to make my Christmas dinner more sustainable? Yes. So for me, so I'm going to go play the seafood card. So a lot of people like to eat salmon at Christmas, either whole salmon, smoked salmon, particularly I think Christmas Eve, I think is a bit of a tradition. Now, I would, I guess, ask you to think twice. Almost all the salmon in this country is farmed, 99% of it. The little bit that's not farmed is endangered. So you don't really want to eat that either. Farm salmon can be okay if you go for organic or RSPCA freedom food salmon. But that is fairly hard to find. So I would probably suggest that if you really want to eat some seafood, you go for something different. There's lots of nice local fish. And to ensure it's sustainable, the best thing to do is to look for an eco label by the Marine Stewardship Council, the MSC. And this is like a blue fish with a tick in the middle of it. It's actually widely available in many supermarkets. And so that's a benchmark effectively that it's a sustainable product. And there's lots of species. So even quite a number of local species, Hake, for example, is a really great local fish that is also certified as sustainable. So see if you can find that. Brilliant. Thank you. Could we ask the same question to Joe, please? Yeah, I was just taking notes on what Bryce was saying as well. That was really useful. Thank you. So one thing you could do to make your Christmas dinner more sustainable would be to think about how you're going to use up your leftovers. So globally, food waste contributes 6% to all greenhouse gas emissions. So if you plan out what you're going to do with your leftovers, you can stop that food going to waste. If you've had a turkey, for example, you might want to slice it up and then put each of those turkey into portions in boxes in the freezer or separate it with pieces of grease proof paper so that you can take out what you need at any one time. And if you're struggling of how to use your leftovers, the Love Food Hate Waste website has a little tool where you can put in the leftover food that you have, and it will give you a recipe of how you can use it as well. Brilliant. Thank you. Sometimes I think we start, in my house, we start planning leftovers before we've even started cooking the main meal. I think there's curries to be had out of this unboxing day. Great. Thank you. Sarah. So the best thing that you can do would be to not have meat or fish for your Christmas dinner. I found a very, very lovely nut roast recipe the other day, and I'm happy to share the link in the chat screen. It was amazing. So that would be the best thing that you can do. And if that's hard to take for some members of your family, my father-in-law's coming for Christmas, and that is not going to go down well for him. So we have chosen some grass-fed beef. So I think, say, if you can afford to have a look at what other options there are in terms of maybe grass-fed, grass-fed products are generally better for greenhouse gas emissions and also animal welfare. So you might want to have a look at those options as well. But I think the other suggestions are great. And certainly, whatever food you're planning on having, thinking about how not to waste it is very, very important. Brilliant. Thank you. And Esther. And I wonder, I know Saint Nick's at the moment has a plastics project. So maybe there's something to be said about plastic packaging with our Christmas meals as well. Yeah, absolutely. So we do have a very exciting project at the moment called Precious Plastic Yolk, which is all about how we can turn our plastic rubbish into funky, interesting objects. So I can talk a little bit more about that later. So yes, it is worth thinking about your packaging. So, you know, always good to, you know, yes, we recycle, that's fantastic. But we always say, can you actually avoid using anything that you're going to waste or it's going to be single use in the first place? So that's always good. And there's some very interesting different ways of all do packaging. So I have a bench box, for instance, with the added bonus, you're getting local veg there. And, you know, that's pretty good. So I think as well as that thinking about your veg peelings. So I can't believe I'm not a gardener. And I can't believe how easy it is to have a compost bin running on in the yard. It's absolute joy making your own compost be gardens. So think about that as well. Brilliant. Thank you all. So our next question has been submitted. It requires a bit of data. I'm going to ask Sarah this question. What are the average carbon emissions of UK households resulting from using Christmas lights? Okay, yes, as you say, this requires a little bit of data. So we did some digging into this. And the good news is, is that actually, particularly if you're talking about LED lights, which most Christmas lights that you can buy nowadays are, is actually it's not a huge amount at all. So it's about 14 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent. So basically, that means carbon dioxide and all of the other gases in the atmosphere that are equivalent to that when you're looking at warming. So it's about 14 kilograms and that's equivalent to about 60 miles of car travel. That's if you're using LED Christmas lights, if you're using incandescent bulbs, it'll be about 10 times higher. If you've got very extravagant displays, those who are in or around York might know Twinkle Pike Way in Wigginton, which is an amazing display, that could be much, much higher. So equivalent to 3,800 miles of car travel. So yes. So if you're thinking about just putting a little string of lights outside your house, and it's LED powered, then probably not too much to worry about. But perhaps if you're going all out and your street is all going a bit mad, then you might want to consider perhaps not having it on all the time. Brilliant. That's great. Thank you. And thanks so much for finding that data. I know this is not always easy to find. It's quite difficult sometimes to make those calculations and those conversions. That's brilliant. Thank you. Unless anyone, any other members of the panel have something they want to add on the subject of lights and power, I think we'll move on. And this next question is about food. So I'm going to ask Joe. Impressive. This question was sent from Harari in Zimbabwe by Sarah. And she asks, Christmas cakes, biscuits, stolons, mince pies, etc. There's a lot of ingredients in these that are not grown locally like the spices, raisins, almonds, etc. To be truly environmentally friendly, are these goodies, to be truly environmentally friendly about these goodies? What are the options apart from being a Scrooge and forgoing them entirely? Yeah. So thank you, Sarah, so much for submitting this question. I thought it was really interesting and definitely something that I've been thinking about as well. So the good news is you don't need to be a Scrooge and stop buying all of these products. Transport actually contributes very little to the greenhouse gas emissions associated with a food product. If we take beef, for example, beef has a very, very, sorry, beef has a lot of greenhouse gas emissions associated with its production. And in fact, transport accounts for less than 1% of that. And for most foods, it's less than 10%. The majority of emissions associated with producing our foods come from land use change and on-farm emissions. And then if we think about which transport is most environmentally friendly, in terms of food miles, shipping actually releases the least carbon dioxide per food mile. And that's partially because we can fit so much food on the ship than we can in a van or a lorry or on a plane, for example. And then if we are thinking about, well, what is the environmental impact of air freighting? It's got 50 times the amount of carbon emissions per food mile than shipping does. But only 0.16% of food is air freighted. So if you're worried about how your food is being transported, the only foods that you need to worry about coming from air freighting are things like fresh berries, which would spoil easily and can't be frozen, and asparagus. So those are the only two products that I would be wary of buying if they're not from the UK. Otherwise, you're all good and you can enjoy your spices, your Stalin, your Christmas cake, and mince pies. That's brilliant. And it's great to have good news. We can eat these things. That's brilliant. Are there any other members of the panel that would like to add anything on that subject? So I can add something, not directly about food miles, but about carbon emissions. So I'm going to go back to seafood, obviously. So a lot of people are surprised to learn that certain shellfish, like mussels and oysters and scallops, as well if they're farmed, are actually net sequesterers of carbon. So the great thing about these species is that they don't need any extra food. They just take their food from the water column. They therefore don't need any chemicals, any sort of medical treatments, and the sorts of issues that you have with salmon farming. And they actually absorb carbon. So their shells are made of calcium carbonate. So they absorb carbon as they grow. And they also actually provide habitats when they're being grown, either on the seabed or on ropes and other structures for other species. So as a seafood choice, it is really hard to beat those types of shellfish. They're actually a fantastic choice, I would have to say. Brilliant. Thank you. Also, good news. And so although this question was about food miles and about importing food, also it also talks about growing food locally. I wondered, Esther, if you wanted to say something about some of St Nick's work with local gardenings, you know, like growing projects? Yeah, sure. And actually, I was thinking about something that we're talking about ahead of this meeting. But yeah, we do link in with different people who are doing specific work around community gardens. And we ourselves run a group that's called Bearing Fruit. So that's run through our eco-therapy project. But I'm kind of thinking about the wealth of things you can kind of flourish around St Nick's and other community gardens. There's some beautiful crab apples. I recently made crab apple jelly with jalapenos in, which has gone down a storm. And I'm kind of stealing someone's idea because we're talking about Christmas-y gin just before we started. And yeah, I've been gathering little bits, you know, you do need to know your berries, but I've been gathering brown balls and sloves and things that you can put in your gin, put some sugar in, I think, and shake it up. So we've unfortunately got slightly addicted to that. So yeah, so we don't so much have grown food at St Nick's ourselves. We do link in with people who do things. And people like the food circle as well, who use food that would be going to waste to make fabulous, beautiful food with waste at Tangled Beauty Centre. But yeah, get flourishing, that's why I say. Brilliant, thanks. I'm not sure we're sending the right message to say we were discussing Christmas gin before this meeting. Obviously, in the context of foraging for local sloves, that's why we were talking about it. Brilliant. So we have another question for all of you, but we have a couple of videos that are related to this topic. And the question is, how can we decorate the house in an eco-friendly way? So I wonder, Jane, if we could play those couple of videos that members of the department here made for us. That's taken a while to load, Jane. While we're waiting for that to load, Sarah, do you have any advice on how we can decorate the house in an eco-friendly way? Yes. Oh, we've got the snowflake movie. I think I'll just pause just there. So I think one of the best things you can do is to go out talking about foraging and try and get some bits of greenery. That's what we do is we're lucky enough to have a garden here. So we get bits of evergreen, so bits of holly, bits of ivy. That's very Christmasy, isn't it? Very traditional Christmasy. And bring those into the house, which is really lovely, actually. So we put them on top of the fireplace and we sit them on the table. So they really give a bit of kind of Christmas cheer. And then the other thing is that we do still get sent quite a lot of Christmas cards, even though we've never sent Christmas cards. But people still send us them. So we string those up around the house. And then we keep them, and next year we cut them up and we use them for decorations and or for crafting with my children, or we use them as gift tax for next year. So that's a really nice thing to do. Brilliant. Thank you. While we're waiting, Esther, could you comment on this same question about eco-friendly decorations? Absolutely. I just want to say I feel your pain with the video thing. Yes, so, Sarah, I've seen your foraging and I raise you one, or my colleagues, Sir Freya and Hannah, do anyway. There's a beautiful description of how to make your own reach on our website, which is danix.org.uk. So it involves getting willow and dogwood and keeping them nice and wet or making them very flexible. So you can put them in a bucket and kind of turn them every day or every couple of days to get you nice and wet. But then pull all the lovely things that Sarah mentioned in to make it look pretty. And you can also put in things like dried oranges and herbs. You can get really, really creative. So talking of creativity, shall we segue into this? I'm going to show you how to make a snowflake pattern recycle document. Here is one that I made earlier, and I'll show you how to make one from scratch. So here I have some old lecture notes that I no longer need. But instead of just recycling the document straight away, I can make a snowflake. So the first step is to fold the piece of paper in half and then fold it again into quarters, like so. And then it's really your choice how you want to design it. So you're going to need some scissors to cut it up. So I want to start by making it into a circle shape. So you can play around with the middle. You can make a little square. You can do some cuttings into the side to make some shapes. And these, in order to make it symmetrical, you want to make sure that you don't cut through the entire piece of paper, but just into the middle. You can cut any shapes you like. So I just cut a triangle and I'm going to cut a slightly wonky rectangle. And on the rim you can cut some more triangles. Have fun with it and you can make any shapes you like. So this looks a bit hard to the minute. I'm going to open it up and see what it looks like. There we go. What a cool looking snowflake made from a recycled piece of lecture notes. And the cut-offs that you make, you can water down and make some paper pulp and decorate them into decorations as well. That's brilliant. That video will be made by Livy, who's a master student here at York. She does come to some of my lectures but she's assured me that they're not my lecture notes that she's been cutting up to make decorations. Jane, we had another video. We're going to risk Jo's video on making decorations. I'm coming. I'm just going to share it now. Okay, brilliant. Thank you. So I'm going to show you a lovely Christmas decoration to make. It also makes a wonderful activity to do with kids. You take oranges and stud them with cloves and dry them out. And so you'll want to slice up the oranges into about one centimetre thick, maybe a bit thicker, and then stud them with cloves. In any pattern you like, you can see I've made a variety. I've also used star anise because I ran out of cloves. Then I'm going to put them on a baking tray on a grid so that it improves the airflow around it, makes it easier to try out. And if you put them on baking paper, it sticks to the baking paper. Then you're going to put it in the oven and I'm going to put it in at 100 degrees for about three hours. You can also put it in at a slightly higher temperature, about 120 degrees centigrade, and then it'll take a bit quicker. Or you can do a lower temperature, 60 degrees for longer, about four hours. As it warms, it will fill the house with the warm, rich smell of the citrus and spices. And here's what they look like after three hours in the oven. They're not entirely dried out yet, but that's fine. And the oven just gave them a head start, and the rest will dry out just in the air. And I've just used some ribbon that I've saved from the past, present, or lent chocolates. And I'll be hanging that on my Christmas tree. Thanks for watching. Brilliant. Thanks, Joe. So we should ask, we should open out questions to the audience. Is there anybody who would like us, has a question they'd like to ask us? Could do meringues at the same time. What an excellent idea, Sarah. I'm not seeing any questions being posted. In that case, we'll move on and we'll answer some of the questions that people have asked us in advance. So this is a good question for Joe. What produces the most methane? So this is a climate change question, obviously. What produces the most methane, raising dairy cows for years to milk and make cheese, or eating a plate of Brussels sprouts? So a festive climate change question, Joe. Thank you to whoever submitted this question, because I really enjoyed researching it. So a study on the composition of human flatulence found that the individual who passed the most methane in a 24 hour period passed 120 millilitres of methane. And the cow that burps the least methane burped 160 litres in a 24 hour period. And another study on Brussels sprouts found they increased flatulence by 44%. And I can't believe someone's done that research, but they have. And there we go. So even if you take the cow that produces the least methane and the human in this study that produced the most methane, the cow still produces 1000 times more than we would be passing. So if anyone was trying to use the facts and saying, oh, well, Brussels sprouts contribute to climate change, therefore I cannot eat them this Christmas. You'll have to think of a bear excuse, I'm afraid. Brilliant. It's fantastic that this research gets done. You know, some people think that as academics, we're always doing pointless research. This is cutting edge, important stuff, right? There was a related, sorry. I just said I agree. There was a related question that we saw a paper from a master's research project about. And the question was, how should Santa Feet is reindeer to reduce methane emissions and help combat climate change? Did you see this, Joe? The master's thesis from the University of Toronto found that Santa should feed his reindeer lichen rather than grass-based pelleted food because that massively reduced their methane emissions. So that's good. And obviously you should be supplementing this lichen with his magic flying formula. Brilliant. Thank you. Not Sawyer. Definitely not Sawyer. Because that's the problem, isn't it? That's what a lot of animals get fed with in industrial systems as they get fed with Sawyer. And I think 90% of the world Sawyer goes towards feed stuff. And so actually that's a real problem because Sawyer can be in large, when it's produced as it is in such large quantities, it actually is really contributing to emissions because there's massive felling of forests to plant the Sawyer plantations. And so yeah, that's where a lot of the world, most of the world Sawyer is going into. So yeah, feeding the reindeer Sawyer, which often, which they would have to do if they ran out of lichen, would definitely not be the way forwards. There were a couple of questions in the Q&A, one of which I think you have more or less just answered. It related to how is eating grass-fed animals better for the environment when they consume an unsustainable amount of land? Yeah, so it's, as I said when I mentioned grass-fed beef, like it is, it obviously, it is much better to not eat meat or fish. That's a much more sustainable alternative in terms of emissions. And obviously in terms of animal welfare and things. But the evidence around grass-fed versus non-grass-fed is quite mixed. And I think in the UK, the research is showing that in many cases it is grass-fed beef is better than non, but it really depends on the system where the animals are being fed. So for example, not to be a bit snooty about this, but when you start talking about meat and ethical consumption, it does, you do end up feeling a bit sounding a bit snooty, but my grass-fed beef, we've got it from the Lower Doent Valley National Nature Reserve. So it's actually performing a really important role there in keeping the forbs down. So increasing the diversity of the site and doing some natural puddling and providing habitats and locking down some carbon into the soil. So it really does matter where your meat comes from in terms of your emissions, if you are going to eat it at all. But as I said before, the best thing is to not consume it at all or dairy. So I have something to add on this topic. So it's some research from Australia where they fed cattle on seaweed. And I can't remember the exact figures, but that significantly reduced the methane emissions from the cattle. So I'm wondering if perhaps Santa's Reindeer's would also benefit from eating seaweed. It possibly like and is just as good. It would be an experiment that maybe we need to do. It's brilliant. It was good to read this master thesis because they literally put reindeer in a sealed chamber in order to measure these methane emissions. This is important work and you're right, we need to be doing the same. All we need to do is find a reindeer and some seaweed in York. How hard can that be? Exactly. There's another question in the chat or in the Q&A rather. And it says, I made my own apple wine using second hand gifted demijohns and reused bottles. I don't think it'll be ready for Christmas. So what would be your tips for sustainable Christmas tipple? Does any of the panel want to offer some advice on sustainable drinks at Christmas? I guess it's kind of Esther's perhaps covered this already by talking about foraging for ingredients to put in her gin. Yeah, I feel like I don't want to go on about the gin again. I feel like I'm partially to blame for the gin one because it was me that started off that conversation beforehand. So what we tend to do is buy a bottle of regular gin from the shops and then in the summertime we've gone out and picked some brambles from the from the fields near me and some apples as well that we've then frozen and kept until winter so that we can use it to flavour the gin. That's my alcoholic contribution there but I don't know anything about buying sustainable spirits. Brilliant, thank you. I wonder if there is an answer to that. I mean just the only thing I'd say is that there are lots of York spirits producers, York gin for example and we also have lots of local York beer producers as well including well lots of local York beer producers and lots of people are doing online markets as well this year so there's regular Etsy online markets and there's regular Facebook markets for those who are in York there's a really nice group called Supporting Local Businesses in York this Christmas and they've been brilliant. You can just post on saying does anyone sell church candles and people reply saying yes I sell them or you can get them at Peckstones or whatever and so yes I would recommend that and there are lots of ideas for local places to buy things and so you are not only supporting a local business but you're also reducing the miles travelled to get it particularly for your cycle to pick it up or whatever. I can pitch in on the packaging for interviews so with those local breweries there's there's quite often schemes where you can you can fill up a little demi-john to take away and reuse which has got to be a good thing but something I didn't realise till I started working at St Nick's is how much more valuable clear glass is than green glass so I kind of think when you're choosing your Christmas tiffel and you can't decide then go for the one that's in a clear glass because it's more valuable as a recycled material. Brilliant thank you I didn't know that so we've got some more questions coming in so one from Jenny Mitchum who asks what type of Christmas tree is greenest, a real tree or a pretend or a pretend one and I think Jo you hadn't you looked into this? Well sorry not me. Oh okay. Sorry. I can I can speak to that one as well so I'm married to a forester so there is this is an interesting conversation we have so the jury seems to come down to saying that it is a real tree now if you've got a tree growing in your garden obviously that would be the ideal and then to take it in every year and and put it back so then also we're thinking you know in terms of where's your tree growing so good if it's local as well but talking you know talking to our team if you've got a pretend tree please don't scrap it because you want to get a new one so look after it and if you really want to get rid of it and please give it to somebody in need and then the same goes for your if you don't want you to have a tree that you want to repot or even hire trees apparently again where do you get them from and all that but if you do get a root tree think about the end of life so you can recycle in your haze court for instance so make sure you look after it another option is when I say look after it make sure you take it away to be recycled properly another option is some animal charities apparently will take the trees for enrichment or you can even use a bit bit to make a little kind of book hotel in your own garden brilliant thank you Esther and yes you're right I'm not sure there's it's possible in York yet but there are various places where you can now hire your Christmas tree you can indeed hire them from York I found out on that same Facebook group that I was telling you about so yeah go and look at support local businesses in York this Christmas and you can find at least two places where you can rent a Christmas tree brilliant what a fantastic thing so that tree that tree is obviously kept alive and you can maybe even rent the same tree next year be reunited brilliant so we have a question from Steph Richards which I'll ask you Sarah if that's all right are there any tips you can recommend for sustainable alternatives to wrapping paper wrapping presents and there's a bigger question that follows any advice on buying sustainable presents and reducing footprint at the consumer stage but perhaps we'll start with a sustainable wrapping oh I was going to start with the second because actually the second question is much much more important like so wrapping paper like that's important but actually the root of all our emissions is our consumption so if you can lower your consumption that is the thing you need to be doing now we've moved in my family to doing secret Santas um which is amazing so for um adults we just draw one person one name and we buy them one present um instead of everybody spending like maybe not huge amounts of money on getting stuff that people didn't really want we ask people so so we have a budget of 30 pounds um and we say would people make a gift list what would you like and they actually are asking for things that they genuinely really would like um and you're allowed to buy second hand things for people in that and we do a lot of that we do a lot of Facebook marketplace and a lot of eBay and and if you can second hand or pre love that is the best thing that you can do because you are not then using any more emissions to create that project so all the emissions associated with you buying that are there it being transported by Royal Mail or whatever career you're using to get it to your house or like I do a lot of local Facebook marketplace so it's just literally me cycling on my bike to meet somebody to go and pick it up so if you can try and reduce the amount of presents you're giving to people and if you are buying presents by them second hand that is the biggest thing that you can do and then also I mean I can talk about rapping as well um if you'd like but let's let someone else talk about reducing your consumption of stuff at Christmas yeah so um absolutely couldn't agree more you know it is about thinking about what we consume and it's going to have far more impact um yeah just to plug the precious plastic York project so we do have some beautiful rewards on our proud funder where you can buy experiences rather than objects um and of course the objects that we are um giving us rewards there are cycled using clean energy so that's another way to to think about it too um so do you like to talk about um rapping paper I guess by all means would you like to go first Sarah or okay so um yes I think you know again it's about being creative a bit like when we're talking about the decorations so um save wrapping paper I haven't bought wrapping paper for years I just save it for every year when I get given it um I think another thing would be um we were talking before about um I can't I cannot pronounce this uh art is it called a cheeky um somebody did a beautiful pronunciation when we talked about it before but um yeah I mean at the art of wrapping things up very beautifully and in a knotted fabric um and I what I've done is bought um scarves from charity shops and clean them and iron them and so that's a really nice thing to do again you can get a little bit of foilage too thank you that's pretty um just so many different ways you can you can make things look good and it's a bit more personal if for whatever reason you do and um you know buying wrapping paper please please make sure it's not plastic please make sure it's as paper as possible no glitter because we're not able to recycle that there's not much we can do with it and it will make our recycling team quite grumpy and when we come back for Christmas break so think about the recyclers um and please leave the glitter in the plastic uh in the shops far away while we're talking about plastics um uh Bryce did you want to say something about plastics in the oceans I mean uh yeah I can say a few things so obviously um everybody knows plastic pollution is a big problem um and from my point of view uh most plastic pollution if it gets loose in the environment it ends up in the waterways in the drains and then in the rivers and all that goes to the sea um it's estimated that uh we're releasing something like eight million tons of plastic uh into the sea every year um and there's some shocking things going on out there seabirds in particular it's estimated may already uh 90 percent of seabirds have some plastic in their stomachs and within the next couple of decades that will be probably up to 99 percent um and so you know I mean I probably don't need to tell most of you about these problems but yeah you know when you've you know unfortunately I've seen some of the consequences of plastic in the oceans and it's really not a pretty sight um so it serves as a motivation to try and do the right thing um but I have uh a couple of suggestions on the other topics so in terms of wrapping paper one thing we do is just use tea towels so we actually have some quite nice tea towels and especially for the presents within the family you know who don't like the kids don't really care do they you so but you can make them look kind of nice enough um and and then you just use them to do the dishes afterwards um and then in terms of gifts this is not a second hand gift but I think it's a would be a nice company to support a local company called Seagrone uh who are based out of um Scarborough and they're a seaweed farming company and so growing seaweed is great because seaweed grows um incredibly fast particularly the kelps that grow off our our shores and then obviously in doing so the plants are storing away carbon um but some of that seaweed is harvested and this particular company Seagrone has some great little gift products so it sort of mixed the seaweed with various herbs and spices they have an online um shop but also I I'm sure I've seen it in morrisons as well um and so check that out but more importantly than that uh seaweed is some people say it's the future you know it's a bit of a wonder food um and it's also can be used in lots of other things so including biodegradable plastics so at the moment this company is at a fairly fairly early stage but um obviously with the right support it can grow and it start contributing to some of these other very environmentally sustainable industries so check them out I'll put the the web link in the chat brilliant thank you for making a note that's great thank you and um Jane I noticed that actually on that subject of uh wrapping presents in cloths just like uh Bryce's use of tea towels that um Sarah sent a tweet that had that image I wonder if we can share that uh perhaps maybe I can put that oh there we go yeah that's brilliant I mean it's not the world's greatest picture but yeah I just thought this matter I got um I bought secondhand a massive bundle of fabric of Facebook um and um there are lots of them are really nicely like if this was me I wouldn't bother hemming it but the person before it actually hemmed them and everything and so I've got these really lovely bits of wrapping paper and it's really nice actually having the same wrapping paper coming out each year um you you feel like oh there's that I remember last year I gave that so and so and you know they go to other people's houses and eventually make their way back to us sometimes which is really nice the other thing we do for wrapping paper is we get a toilet roll subscription service um called who gives a crap and they come in really nice wrapping paper and and we save those and we use them for wrapping small things and throughout the year if it's children we have to cut off the bit that says crap because um but yeah so that's that's what else we do I have to say the reason I found out that Father Christmas wasn't really real was because when I was little I remembered that I'd seen that wrapping paper the year before at my grandparents house and so that was what spoiled the magic for me so if you do that you have to be careful you you lost me there Sarah something about Santa not being real uh yeah I can't I'm sure we've got good scientific evidence uh about uh Greenland ice shelves where I know Santa lives um we also James we had a um a video from one of our students didn't we who was um uh made a Christmas cracker uh could we share that perhaps I can try thank you a free sheet of paper um double sided tape gonna rip a bit off stick it on the center of the edge okay take off the thingy and stick a toilet roll there add the other two to the sides and then roll place something on there once you get more tape and do the same on the other side peel off stick it take out the um toilet rolls on the edge on the sides and then put get your favorite string this is my favorite string and then put your prize in this is a highlighter refill an environmentally friendly prize and then put the other side get your second favorite favorite string and tie a bow Christmas cracker when you pull it brilliant I put that that was uh from Jenny who's the one of the students here at York in the Environment Geography Department I like the fact she was excited to find a prize that she herself had just put in there seconds ago that's the kind of enthusiasm uh we need at Christmas that's great and I don't know if everyone's keeping an eye on the chat but a great suggestion from Ivana of using old maps as wrapping paper uh which I think I will try I hang on to these maps for years and years even though I know that I would probably die if I head to the hills with maps that don't have the right rows on them so I'm going to try that we had a great question from Joe Hossle um which I'd like to ask all the panel members please um which is what is your favorite green present uh either received in the past or hoped for in the future and perhaps if we could start with Joe yeah so I can have to be kind of quiet here because I bought some for my mum for Christmas and I've been gifted them before in the past as well it's um like reusable cotton pads for removing makeup for washing your face with I just think that's such an amazing idea because usually I would use one cotton pad twice once on each side and then bin it whereas now I've got a set of 15 that I can reuse and just chuck in the wash so that's really helped me cut down on my on my waist as well brilliant thank you um Esther do you have a a favorite Christmas present that you've either received or you're hoping for um so my favorite thing I ever got for Christmas was my compost bin I'm a complete converse just please jump in do it if you won't regret it uh yeah absolutely wonderful brilliant thank you uh Sarah on a similar theme I once got a wormery for Christmas which I loved and sadly it didn't survive the house move and it kind of disintegrated now I just have two massive compost bins and like you Esther I feel like I'm a kindred spirit I'm a huge compost fan my um I have a coach and she said to me what is it you really like doing Sarah and I was like this is going to sound really weird but I really love turning my compost she was like yeah that does sound really weird but it's so satisfying um so yeah that's probably it's like was my best present ever yes I do make a lot of compost I have more compost than I can actually use I have to give it away and just dump it outside with a sign help yourself it disappears very quickly brilliant uh Bryce any suggestions on Christmas presents or I mean I think a a restored secondhand bicycle I think that would be a good present to get you know obviously you're making sure it doesn't go to waste but also obviously riding a bike is the most sustainable form of transport there is pretty much I think apart from walking sometimes it's a bit too far to walk so yeah that would be a nice present for sure are you looking over my shoulder oh there we go I thought of old bicycles hadn't spotted that maybe it was subliminal maybe I'd see that earlier am I allowed to ask a compost question yeah of course you are yeah since we've got two avid composters here someone told me recently that you can compost rubber so I've always been binning the rubber bands that came on them spring onions but can you actually compost them am I allowed to do that are you allowed to ask I don't know the answer I don't know the answer Sarah do you know the answer I've tried this accidentally and it it doesn't it takes too long in my home compost bin I reckon you if you had like an industrial compost bin it might get hot enough that you could do it s is nodding but I don't think you can do it in a domestic compost bin yeah I was I was going to say so we got quite excited this is the kind of thing we talk about say makes get quite excited about so we thought we were somebody said did you know you can compost rubber so one thing is it's got to be rubber you know and we're like oh yeah of course it's from a plant I write and again I'm really excited tried it it hasn't worked and we get a little bit annoyed sometimes at things that are said to be compostable so you know there's some kind you know like cups and things like that sort of single use cups that will be billed as compostable but the small print is it's in the big industrial industrial composters yes so pinch of salt with that one I think yeah thank you I suspect mine too doesn't get hot enough but you can if you have a source of manure to go back to our discussion of emissions then adding that to your compost will massively increase the heat maybe then we could try it's an interesting experiment we should think about it we have another question in the in the q&a similar to our what we're talking about wrapping paper joe asks joe hossell asks what are sustainable alternatives to tinsel tinsel being iberalaminium or more often plastic ester do you have any suggestions on this well i'm going to like really date myself here but um so here my 1970s upbringing we were to thread uh milk bottle tops and um you know pythons and things like that um even sort of sweetie wrappers i mean you wouldn't really want the sweetie wrappers in the first place i'd say to you know avoid them but yeah so you could thread very well cleaned aluminium bottle tops or pythons and again get creative that that's that snowflake idea perhaps you could do a little bit of that on some of the aluminium and then when you're finished of course you could unthread it and you could recycle it brilliant thank you that sounds like the perfect answer to me uh and you know what that brings back memories of milk bottle tops yeah absolutely and uh from the 70s putting them on bits of string and then used in the garden to scare birds off young crops that's what we used to see now i sound unbelievably old uh uh i think that's probably the perfect answer i don't think we need to unless any other members of the panel have other suggestions for tinsel like um i've put a few in the i don't know if people can see the answer that i've put to joe's question in the q&a and but i had a few other ideas so um popcorn um can look really nice as well so if you pop corn and then thread that on thread or string that can look really nice um i also had another idea which was um like you could crochet some so i have some nice crocheted kind of star decorations um which actually look really nice in especially if you're again reusing wool um charity shops are a really really good place for buying wool because lots of people when lots when elderly ladies die they often have wool in their houses and they often just get all their stuff cleared out to a charity shop so it's a brilliant place for buying wool um so um yep so that's another option and i also saw something recently on twitter i think which was somebody had saved all of their like satsuma and lime and lemon peels from over the year and they cut them out into a little star shape dried them out and then just threaded those on so they had like a multicoloured garland and i thought that looked really nice and i thought if i think i'd had that idea like three months ago i could have done that but i'm definitely not going to eat that much citrus before christmas so i can't do it now but maybe next year no that's also a brilliant idea and will compost again you need your compost nice and hot to get rid of all those citrus uh but is possible brilliant thank you so um we actually had a question um so as uh um people may know the sei here in york is one of several sei offices around the world and a journalist um who is anonymous as far as i can tell asked a question of the sei um uh office in sweden and it got passed to us because it's on a christmas theme and it says that from the question is from a climate perspective is it better to buy online or in the shop um and what should we think about and take account of when thinking of that um joe did you um have a chance to look at this question yes i did i thought it was a really interesting question and it's something that i was thinking about as well because i was buying my christmas gifts online and then thinking oh hang on is this what i should be doing is it better for the environment i'm not sure so i'm really glad they asked that question and i think probably a lot of other people will be thinking about this as well the centre for retail research i found out earlier they predicted that online shopping will grow 25 this year compared to last year for obvious reasons people not wanting to go um out to the shops as much there there are several studies that have been done on this but in short the answer is it it depends there's so many different ways you can you can model the different factors that come into play when you're ordering a product online to be delivered to your house so one thing it really depends on is how many products you put in your basket and buy any one time from from that retailer if i buy five products from a specific retailer then per product the carbon cost of getting it transported to me is much less than if i bought one product from that same retailer and another thing that these models take into account when they're trying to calculate the carbon cost of transporting a product to you from online as well as is how long you spend buying the product since there'll be a carbon cost associated with you using energy to power your laptop and buy it in the first place and then again from a consumer perspective if i've bought that product am i now less likely to drive my car to the shops in in order to buy things so those are only three of the factors to be taken into consideration when modeling these things there's there's so much more coming into play it's initially when i read the question i thought oh that's a really simple question but there's not a simple answer and i think probably my advice would be like do what you feel most comfortable doing at the moment and when you are buying your Christmas presents probably to plan out what you're buying beforehand because it might be that you can buy multiple products from the same online retailer and cut down the carbon footprint associated with getting it to you those are my thoughts i would add if you're buying online this is less of a problem these days because so many of us are working at home but you know always give an alternative delivery address like leave with a neighbor or you know around the back or whatever because a big part of the delivery cost is failed deliveries and then therefore the carbon footprint and the emissions and all the rest of it so you know that's obviously good for you because you get your product when you want it but also it makes a big difference to the environmental impact and you get to make make friends with your neighbors as well and spread a bit of cheer so what's not to love no brilliant and i'm just looking at the chat and seeing that various people are sharing their advice on green tips at Christmas Jane's saying that she has a Chinese money plant and it's really easy to propagate from that plant so she gives a little baby plant away as a Christmas presents this is my little brother everyone in the family has aloe vera plants because he and he forgets every year and gives us more aloe vera plants so they're everywhere that's a good that was a good idea do we have and someone else suggesting again ester actually propagating succulents um any questions from the floor um what are we missing any quest any unanswered questions in the q and a i can't see any anyone brave enough to um have their mic turned on and ask us a question if they want to ask a question they could put their name in the chat box and i can unmute yeah thank you jane i could talk more about presents from uh um kind of just building on what we're saying before about experiences rather than things and yet getting really getting that joe's a big fan of plants so yeah it's lovely to do that kind of swapping as well isn't it so it's like if you get into plants it's it's one of the joes to swap around and but what about kind of acts of service for people so you know you see it's been you know we have we have restrictions don't we but it's been a tricky really tricky year for people um how can we help out um what would we do for people who might be uh have been shielding uh most of it or just a friend that's uh in need of um you know a skill that you can offer so i think that's a lovely way to think about presents as well go zero could i just say also i think yeah that's absolutely right ester and i think the other thing to say is that um it's a bit of a cliche but all this stuff is not just for christmas so for example food banks um get absolutely inundated with food at christmas time and it's become a bit of a thing that people do that kind of reverse advent calendar thing so in mid november they start putting an item in every day which is amazing and obviously at christmas time particularly people need people all coming together and well not this year so much but you know people do need lots of food it's really important to do that but you know to kind of spread that spread that giving out throughout the year it's really important if you can do that too um and but just on the experiences thing i think that's that's a really nice thing to do and it could be like so i've started giving gifts to a very old friend of mine and we still keep giving each other presents every year and she's really hit or miss with her presents i really hope she's not watching political i mean it's just like they're either absolutely spot on like a really nice warm pair of socks or they're like a really really naff like photo frame which i just immediately charity bag as soon as i get it um and so we've started buying each other more experience-y type things so it's like here's a little voucher that i've made you for you to go and have an afternoon tea or next time i see you i'm going to take you out for a big slice of cake and it's more of those kind of like actually here's a gift of my time um which i think is really lovely and my sister just had a baby and i've given her a gift of some um local ready meals um she's in south devon so i don't see her but um yeah and so those kind of things rather than stuff experiences rather than stuff is all good unless it's something like a jumbo jet flight that would probably not be very sustainable brilliant thank you and uh esto i know that st nix has got this uh upcycling project at the moment are there any christmas gift ideas that spring to mind out of that yeah i kind of feel like i've been shamelessly plugging it but it is for a very very good cause so the project itself is a community project so it's an international um affair and we're wanting to launch a precious plastic in york so what we'll be doing is um we already collect plastic we'll be inviting people to work with us to collect plastic be able to bring it along to our workspace shred it and use our extruder and our injection mold to make different things and i'll compress it as well so um as well as being a fun activity to do it's about changing hearts and minds about plastics and you know thinking about there is no throwing things away actually this is a material that could be used again um you know a lot more effectively than shipping off to be recycled somewhere but also get people thinking about designs so you know thinking about the circular economy thinking about how we could what objects could we design to support that way of being um so it's part of our efforts to get hold of our machines we are doing this crowdfunding that i'll play in the chat and i'll plug it again but we've got all kinds of lovely rewards um we've got some objects like um coasters and patches and things like that um but we've also got some experiences so we've got a tour around the treasures and say nix and we've also got a kind of bushcrafty family session that you can you can get if you're feeling very generous you can become one of our superstars and we'll put your your name or your family's name your dog's name we don't mind um we'll put that put your name in kind of uh you know sustainable likes um to thank you for your generosity we are just um a thousand pound short of hitting a target which means we'll get two and a half brand dog marks and fences so please please please donate if you can and we hope to see you when we've got the machines up and running that sounds brilliant uh and uh as you say both an activity and uh uh crafting and recycling all in one go uh sounds brilliant um we had a question from Zoe about um cooking in uh hay boxes which I've heard of and and don't know enough about um Havana it's lovely to see the chat with people now helping each other Havana um posted a link uh about hay boxes uh work and um Zoe and Sarah sorry um you posted a response I wondered if you could say a little bit about that about the the most environmentally friendly ways to cook uh when we're thinking about cooking these big roast dinners at Christmas yeah so um basically the oven is the least energy efficient item for cooking you have in your kitchen so the most efficient is your microwave then it's your smoke cooker and it's your hob and then it's your oven and so what you want to do is try and to minimize the amount of time of things in the oven so if you can park your stuff in the microwave to then finish off in the oven that's how I do jacket potatoes for example if I've got otherwise if I'm having the oven on anyway I'll put them in there at the end if I'm not I'll just do them as um just in the microwave and so yeah I think it's about planning um your meal um I'm not really an expert on cooking um meat especially not meeting the microwave so I can't comment whether that will taste nice at all I did see a video of a guy who was suggesting that everyone cooked it in them I think it's called sous vide they always talk about it on master chef um which is like I think sticking it in like a water bath but that just looked a bit hideous to me but apparently that is very very effective way of cooking turkey but who knows um but I do think that that thing about like what Jo was talking about earlier about um ensuring there isn't food waste so like if you are cooking meat for example you want to make sure that actually you've got a small portion so maybe do you need an enormous turkey particularly if it's only your immediate family for Christmas in Covid year um so yeah thinking about cooking small and therefore actually how can you cook that maybe you could cook it in a water bath or something instead yeah but I mean I like I I know I keep saying about this but actually like they're they're it's more about the other consumption that's going on around Christmas um that actually is going to have a bigger impact um than how you cook your dinner no absolutely so we had um a question about travel um uh which is um what about traveling to family over Christmas particularly people with far far apart flung families oh struggle with that alliteration while you're there Sarah uh is this a topic you can talk on I know that SEI has been developing travel tools so so we can look at our carbon footprints from traveling yeah so um so we've done a lot of so we we're behind the WWF carbon footprint calculator and um when people fill that in whatever whatever they're doing um is totally dwarfed by any emissions that they have um by flying so if you can avoid to flying to that purse that far flung family member um then you know there are alternatives um so um rail and um ferry are definitely green alternatives than flying um and then just try to do it less often as hard um but that's the fact of the matter if you really want to reduce your carbon emissions then flying is your is your big that's the big big problem um and you know if it makes you feel better you could try carbon offsetting uh it's a controversial topic um and that's because many carbon offsetting schemes are actually not um they're they're basically providing funding for the initiatives that would have gone ahead anyway regardless of whether your um your funding was there so if you are going to do carbon offsetting I would strongly recommend that you do a lot of research around whether it is actually a genuinely new project that actually is going to be um helping sequester carbon um so for example everyone thinks that tree planting is a really fantastic thing to do but so much tree planting at the moment is actually going uh taking place on unsuitable habitats and so actually you're losing um carbon that is locked in the soil that carbon is leaving the soil and and going up into the atmosphere during the tree planting so think really carefully um if you are wanting to salvage your pain of um flying through offsetting you're right and it's astonishingly difficult to get a good answer uh on offsetting offsetting schemes uh certainly I was I was quite surprised that uh I thought naively when booking some flights remember in the years before we were still allowed to fly um that uh I imagined the university would have a a simple offsetting supplier and of course it's not quite that simple I mean Bryce are you prepared to talk on on this subject with family in Australia? I mean you know what can I say uh a global pandemic has reduced my carbon footprint I was actually due to be on sabbatical uh in Australia for the last three months so that's obviously not happened um it's a really difficult one you know what what what can I do about it uh to reduce my carbon footprint I mean yeah I do occasionally fly to Australia and you know I don't I wouldn't want anyone to tell me to stop I talk to my family um regularly on Skype and Zoom and that's great but it's nothing like being there in person so yeah I mean in in my case I just try to be as environmentally conscious in everything else that I do um to try to make up for it and you know that's the best I can do really. Not sure um we have a I'm not entirely sure how this is a sustainability question unless it's a question about um uh sustainable fashion but Zoe asks uh uh do we need to think about what what do we need to think about when it comes to Christmas attire thinking especially about Christmas jumpers and uh Zoe do you want to elaborate on that question or is it is the concern that we're buying things just to be worn for a short period and then discarding them? So last year um in the department I set up a Christmas jumper day to raise money for safer children and there were one or two frowns and rightly so um because Christmas jumpers aren't necessarily very eco-friendly um so I was just wondering if the panel will be able to elaborate on that. Brilliant uh thank you uh anyone want to pick up that question? Can I start? Yes but you say start this sounds like you've got lots to say on this episode. No I mean I think other people will have things to say too yeah so there's so many problems with Christmas jumpers if you're thinking about buying a new Christmas jumper every year like if you're thinking about like your dad's Aaron's sweater that has a Christmas print on and kind of has been coming out every year for the last 30 years I think that's probably fine but um so all sorts of problems with Christmas jumpers um the ones that are kind of made let's talk about like Primark type Christmas jumpers okay so you will have all sorts of toxic dyes being used in their production and often in places where um there's poor environmental regulation so actually that is just being released into rivers and cause causing untold harm into the local rivers and also toxic effects on the people the workers around um so there's problems with the dye cotton is um an incredibly um a hungry plant in terms of both water and pesticide and fertilizers to produce and so most of the Christmas jumpers that you'll be people will be purchasing will not be organic cotton and so that's another problem so there's that issue and there's also all sorts of issues around the actual kind of factory conditions etc which they're um made in and then of course they're shipped over here etc so um Christmas jumpers are great if you can buy them secondhand so um you know and lots of people like you know they they wear it for one year and then it you know that's it again I always keep going on about Facebook marketplace but Facebook marketplace is a really really good place to get secondhand jumpers um my daughter has a Christmas jumper day at school tomorrow and my child minder's son gave her his Christmas jumper um so that's what she's going in tomorrow so um there are definitely more sustainable things that you can do um um so I think it's about being mindful um and it's about thinking about can you pass it onto somebody after you've worn it who will then wear it again that would be a sensible um thing to do I think brilliant thank you I I never knew it was such a big issue but you're right of course anything that we're going to discard quite quickly is a is a big problem Joe I got the impression that you wanted to say something on the subject of Christmas jumpers yeah just to add on to what Sarah was saying about like um giving jumpers to other people who might want to use them if you know someone who's around the the same height size and build as you you can just swap Christmas jumpers each year so then you have a what feels like a new Christmas jumper but is actually completely brand like completely secondhand so I love that idea you know I don't even I don't possess a Christmas jumper so if anyone is looking and thinking I might be about your size um you could cycle to meet me I would love your Christmas jumpers I guess the other thing is to wear it all December as well you know so you know you haven't got 10 different outfits that would cut down on things I do I do a similar thing where I've been wearing the same jumpers for about 20 years so uh I mean the exactly brilliant thank you everyone I can't see any more questions coming in and we only have a few minutes left so um I think I'll start drawing things to a close but before we do so we'd like you the audience to complete a very quick poll which I think Joe and Jane have been preparing brilliant um and you'll notice the first question there is very Christmasy which is thinking about your environmental and your green credentials do you think that this year you're on Santa's naughty or nice list so um and it's not annoyingly it says here that hosts and panellists cannot vote so I really appreciate it if people would fill in those short questions and when you do so we will have a look at the answer particularly though the answer to that question one well I feel slightly did or not I'm not allowed to fill in that question myself obviously nice list yeah because I've definitely learned a lot tonight so uh I'd be ticking there's so much button I'm going to definitely do Claire you made a suggestion of drawing the oranges out so like Joanne's oranges but drawing them out on your radiator over the weekend like that I am going to do that this weekend I think that's such a lovely idea and I was thinking exactly that it's like it would be so nice to do but what about the oven being on radiators fantastic idea yeah thank you for that yeah brilliant and pictures of all those of these ideas really appreciated if you can uh you can either email them to um to yesy at york.ac.uk or you can use the hashtag York Green Christmas we'll see them and stick them on our website and it'd be good to to share these ideas out I've also by myself making notes I'm particularly going to get a have a look at um uh Seagrone uh Brice's suggestion of seaweed based presents that'll be that will certainly shock my father I think for me it's the creativity and the fun of it so rather than feeling all hard done by it's it's just so much more fun than trawling around the shops and and getting miserable and seeing it as how can you enhance people's experiences and have a lovely time together more than you know worrying about materialistic so yeah no it's been really inspiring thanks everyone Esther I wondered if we could have your crowd funder in the chat again because I don't want to scroll all the way up but I do want to drop into it it's of course I have it here that's lucky thank you thank you really so he has a question about the oranges do they not dribble down the radiators make them all sticky or do you rest them on something I think some experimental work has to be done here I'll report back Zoe I will try it tomorrow and let you know I'll tweet about it and let you know I've been jumping here so I used oranges that were actually about three or four weeks old and we just hadn't got around to eating them and eventually I decided I was going to try this orange thing so they were pretty dry already they didn't leak very much oh and Claire in the chat is saying you can use paper towels yeah tea towels definitely some experimenting needs to be done but I'd like the idea of using different citrus fruits you get the different colors brilliant and obviously we'll need some lines to combine with Joe's winter gin recipes and Jane is it possible to see this poll and see however people think they should be on the naughty list or the lice list well look at that 90% of people have self awarded themselves green niceness this is excellent a mere 10% are still a bit worried well it's good because whether you've been good or naughty this year there's there's always more we can all do I guess and so I hope that many of you will also join us for our new year's resolution event again in partnership with St Nick's which will be on the 12th of January and we'll post details of that on on the website soon the idea being to think about what we can be doing in the new year and posting ideas so whether there'll be a short much shorter about half an hour or so ask the experts panel as part of that event from St Nick's on the 12th of January so thanks so much for everyone I think we are basically out of time and we should be joining us to a close but thanks so much to the panelists and thanks so much everyone for coming and this is the flyer to the St Nick's event uh on the 12th so have a good Christmas everybody and have a good new year and thanks again so much for coming good night everyone thank you thank you thank you bye Merry Christmas