2023-12-16 21:17:49
Once again, the streets of towns and cities begin to turn on the lights that predict the arrival of the Christmas season. Moving further and further forward in the calendar, the lighting dances to the tune of ancient Rome, which during the winter solstice festivals illuminated the streets with torches. Later, as far as garlands are concerned, fire gave way to light bulbs and the old tungsten lights have finally been transformed into the LED lights that dominate Christmas nights today.
In the race for low consumption, this technology has been expanding at a dizzying speed by not wasting its energy in the form of heat. However, in the relationship between Christmas lights and the pollution they generate there are a few more edges. The astrophysicist and expert in light pollution, Alejandro Sánchez de Miguel, synthesizes them into three: energy waste; the emission of CO2 in the production of electricity and in the manufacture of lights; and light pollution.
“The main reason for its use is the stimulation of the secretion of happiness hormones to promote Christmas shopping,” explains Sánchez de Miguel. “It is ultimately a marketing exercise.”
Current LED lights, although they have much lower consumption than traditional ones, have many other cons. “In its manufacturing, many tons of CO2 are emitted, rare earths are extracted that are very polluting and its mining is one of the most destructive phenomena on the planet,” explains Sánchez de Miguel.
Whether they are more or less sustainable than traditional lights depends, first of all, on “their energy savings being greater than those that existed before, that this energy saving is sufficient to offset the environmental impact of their manufacturing” and, therefore, Lastly, “that its luminous emissions are lower than those that traditionally existed.”
Light pollution “has many impacts, Christmas lights are just a seasonal increase in it,” he explains. “They attract insects to cities and towns,” which in turn can attract some animals to the city, “such as bats or even plant pests.” According to the expert, if the lights are kept on until late, they can also interfere with rest.
«In the world, there are hardly any measures taken to truly control light pollution or real CO2 emissions. At most, you see what the energy expenditure is in the best of cases, when in a large part of the cases, the largest amount of emissions is made in transportation or manufacturing.
The famous energy efficiency of LED lights could also be in the spotlight due to the so-called rebound effect, according to a study published in the journal Energy and environmental sciences: “Improvements in the luminous efficiency of outdoor lamps may not lead to energy savings or reductions in greenhouse gas emissions,” the study explains. “When light becomes cheaper, many users increase lighting and some areas that were not previously illuminated can be illuminated.”
A study published in Science Advance stated that light pollution grows 2.2% per year, supporting the theory of the rebound effect. According to them, the goal of the “lighting revolution,” decreasing energy consumption, “could be undermined by a rebound effect of increased usage in response to the reduction in the cost of light.”
In addition, Christmas is increasingly extending on the calendar: the lights are turned on for an average of 200 hours over 35 days, from December 1 to January 6 in most cases, according to data from the Adeces Foundation. However, the lighting in many cities and municipalities is much earlier, such as Madrid, which in 2022 celebrated its official lighting on November 24.
Electricity is not a clean energy, but still comes, depending on the day and time, from fossil fuels. The Institute for Energy Diversification and Saving (Idae) estimates that each kilowatt per hour of LED lights produces 340 grams of CO2. However, obtaining spending figures, and therefore pollution, is not a simple task. There are no studies that indicate the increase in the use of electricity that these dates bring, nor the pollution it represents depending on the day and time, since the sources of energy production are highly variable.
As published by a Spanish news site in 2022, “all cities, both those that did not change anything compared to other years and those that opted for another approach, assured that the weight that Christmas lights have regarding spending on public lighting is “inferior” when it comes to LED lights.
The same goes for the environmental impact. “It is mandatory (to measure the figures) whenever an installation can affect a protected area and, given that light pollution has a range of up to 400 kilometers, all protected areas are affected to a lesser or greater extent.”
In addition to these impacts, LED technology has brought with it a whitening of city lights at night. Although they can generate any color, in some countries white has been established over the old orange bulbs.
«White light is made up of all the colors of the rainbow. If we focus, for example, on blue, green and red light, where human beings have maximum sensitivity, blue light is the one that is dispersed the most in the atmosphere and in our eye,” says Sánchez de Miguel.
For this reason, cold light pollutes more, dazzles more and is not particularly useful for vision. Furthermore, according to the expert, it is the type of light that most affects almost all species and the hormonal regulation of humans, because the color waves of cold light are shorter and vary more quickly than in the case of cold light. orange. This causes them to “collide” with the surfaces in their path to a greater extent when they disperse and, therefore, the sensation of glare is greater.
In their case, red light barely affects a few species, but it is not very efficient for vision either. “Therefore, historically, orange light has been the best compromise between visual comfort and efficiency,” says the astrophysicist, which is why pleasant lighting designs choose very warm colors. “They are the historical ones, since for millions of years we have illuminated ourselves with fire.” In this cocktail of conditions, everything leads to a common denominator: a higher level of light pollution in cities.
Currently there are alternatives that bring a Christmas light with less environmental impact. «In some places, such as central London, they have opted, instead of resorting to massive lighting, for physical decoration that also serves during the day. So not only is it less light polluting, but also from a marketing point of view.”
Another example could be the city of Manchester, which has designed a biodegradable Christmas decoration using recycled materials. «The secret to polluting less is simply to control what you do and measure it. “Unfortunately, light pollution is a very interdisciplinary and new area, which makes it very difficult to obtain funds to generate the tools so that it can be controlled effectively.”
There are still a large majority of cities that have not even begun to get on the sustainable Christmas bandwagon. «Christmas is an astronomical and family holiday, from which little by little we are extracting all its meaning and turning it into a mere consumer spectacle. Recognizing their environmental impact is simply bad press, which is exactly what they intend to avoid,” concludes Sánchez.
NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC
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