Letters: Waste at Christmas is a symptom of a sick system

Some 50,000 trees are cut down each year to produce enough wrapping paper for the country’s presents

At a time of heightened marketing, Christmas has become a holiday centred around consumption.

Royal Mail estimates around 150 million cards are posted during the Christmas season.

Approximately 30,000 tonnes of Christmas cards are thrown away each year. That’s only a piece of the 30 percent more waste that is generated by jolly Brits during the festive period.

Some 50,000 trees are cut down each year to produce enough wrapping paper for the country’s presents. Around 500 tonnes of Christmas lights are thrown away each year. And approximately £4 billion is spent on unwanted gifts.

Around 12 million tonnes of plastic enter our environment each year—with a particular spike during the holidays.

We’ve been conditioned to buy too much even though we all face mass uncertainty, steep living costs, low wages. And the food that goes to waste each year amounts to around 42 million dishes of food.

Food banks are at crisis point and an estimated 58 people died of homelessness last year.

In this context, this amount of food waste only highlights the deep problems we face under capitalism. Everyone deserves to feel safe, happy and warm this Christmas.

If only we lived in a society where that was not to the detriment of working class people.

Vic Hoover, north London

Support the Palestine hunger strikers

Eight of the Filton 24 are currently on hunger strike in British prisons.

All these people want is a world that isn’t corrupted by profit, for children to not recognise the sounds of bombs more than birds.

The hunger strikers are highly likely to die—I’m very scared for them.

The BBC and the government refuse to acknowledge their demands or even their existence.

The government’s genocidal greed is disgusting, it’s not what being human was meant to mean.

This is why it’s time to escalate and to broaden the movement. There’s no other option.

Join rallies, come to Woolwich crown court, in south London on Fridays 9.30am till 4.30pm. Leaflet your workplace and train stations. Flypost, spray paint, call radio stations, shut down roads, stage walkouts on campuses and convince others to join.

The more voices we have, the louder the message, the more hands, the faster resistance is built.

Anya Charlesworth, south London

Collecting for ­refugees this holiday season

People in Islington, north London, have come together to organise the collection and delivery of donations for refugee camps in France.

Organised by Islington Stand Up To Racism, collection points were set up across the borough.

This collaboration with Care4Calais has been highly successful in terms of donations collected.

It also provided an important opportunity to spark conversation about welcoming refugees and opposing borders.

This is a time of rising racist rhetoric on our screens and in our streets. We are seeing an interplay between the right wing electoral and street movements. It is important to organise our local communities.

Our delivery hopes to reach Calais before the end of the year and we will be repeating this in the new year as a wider north London project.

This success shows appetite for grassroots organisation. We hope to take this forward, grow, and celebrate as a community with the Together demo on 28 March.

Maia Kazakova Garcia, north London

Netflix’s dodgy deal

It was announced earlier this month that Netflix will buy Warner Bros Studios.

This will put an end to the 102-year-old studio as we know it.

Netflix boss Ted Sarandos claims they are “saving Hollywood”, but directors and actors have voiced their fears.

I think we can be sure that Netflix isn’t doing this to preserve the history of cinema. It wants to keep churning out quantity over quality.

And that’s without even considering the backroom politics.

Elliot Wright, Liverpool