The Christmas movie emitting the most CO2 in Germany

The Christmas movie emitting the most CO2 in Germany

The time to indulge in everything Christmassy is in full swing as the urge to stay in, cosy up on the sofa all day and watch endless films is socially accepted and celebrated. Whether you’re in the mood for a Christmas holiday classic or a Christmas rom com, it’s safe to say the movie industry has you covered on whatever you’re feeling.

With that being said, it’s no secret that Christmas has a huge environmental impact, with plans to create and strive towards an eco-friendlier Christmas in the future. This inspired the energy saving experts at Uswitch.com to uncover which Christmas film is emitting the most CO2 to encourage Christmas film lovers to reduce their streaming carbon footprint.

The top 10 Christmas films emitting the most CO2 per viewing

*Based on estimated CO2 emissions of 55g per hour of video streaming provided by the Carbon Trust (Carbon impact of video streaming, 2021)

After a thorough investigation, the experts at Uswitch.com can uncover the Christmas film potentially emitting the most CO2 is the 2006 rom com ‘The Holiday’ with 126.5 grams of CO2 being emitted per viewing. The CO2 emission equivalent to one person watching the rom com classic would be the same as driving 0.426 KM in a car.

Following closely behind in second is the 1946 classic ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, emitting an estimated 119.17 grams of CO2 per viewing and would be equivalent to 0.401 KM of driving.

Ranking third is the 2003 Christmas star-studded classic ‘Love Actually’ with its CO2 emissions estimated to reach 118.25 grams per viewing and 0.398 KM of driving.

The top 10 Christmas films emitting the most CO2 in Germany

Having been able to uncover the potential CO2 emissions from these Christmas classics, Uswitch.com were also curious to calculate and estimate the CO2 emissions per European country. To do this, they used the above data of CO2 emitted from one viewing and multiplied it by the number of German households with internet access according to Eurostat.

According to the extensive research provided by Uswitch.com they can estimate a whopping 4,925.12 tonnes of CO2 emissions emitted from German households with internet access watching ‘The Holiday’. ‘It's A Wonderful Life’ could potentially emit 4,639.61 tonnes of CO2 in Germany and ‘Love Actually’ could emit 4,603.92 tonnes.

Methodology

1. The energy experts at Uwitch.com were curious to investigate the estimated CO2 emissions of popular classical Christmas movies throughout Europe.
   
   
2. To do this, Uswitch.com curated their own seed list of the most popular Christmas films by selecting those with recurring mentions in the following sources; Esquire, Rotten Tomatoes, Vulture, Good Housekeeping, Time Out and Cosmopolitan.
   
   
3. Approximate CO2(g) emissions for single viewings of each film within our list were calculated by multiplying the film duration (hours) by the estimated CO2 emissions per hour of video streaming of 55g, as established by the Carbon Trust White Paper.
   
   
4. The total number of viewings is calculated based on the assumption that all households with internet access view at least one Christmas film. Households with internet access are calculated as the percentage of households with internet access multiplied by the total number of householdsas found on Eurostat.
   
   
5. The estimated viewing households was then multiplied by estimated emissions per viewing (re-calculated as CO2 tonnes) to find the approximate emissions per country for each Christmas movie.
   
   
6. To filter out countries without a significant presence of US films, and thus a low probability of viewing US/UK based Christmas movies, we only include countries in which a notable portion of titles in Video on Demand catalogues are produced by the US as stated in the Market fragmentation in Video-onDemand Services in the EU28 report from the European Comission.
   
   
7. The estimated emissions per capita were then calculated as the total emissions per country divided by the total population.
   
   
8. Finally, the emissions per capita for the selected European countries were used to calculate the estimated vehicle kilometres that could be travelled based on the average CO2 emissions of 122.3g per KM for all new European cars (European Environment Agency, 2019).