December is always a busy month. It starts with the first company Christmas dinners, moves on to Secret Santa get-togethers, continues with family Christmas Eve meals, rolls into New Year’s celebrations and, for many people, only slows down after Epiphany. Between lights, lavish tables and social events, we spend whole weeks in “party mode”. And, almost without realising it, in “consumption mode” too.
The problem isn’t celebrating. The problem is when celebrating gets confused with accumulating.
Over the course of a year, Portugal wastes around 1.9 million tonnes of food – the equivalent of 184 kg per person. In December, this trend intensifies: we buy more “just in case”, repeat desserts at every table, multiply starters and main courses, and a significant share of the food never gets eaten. In parallel, consumption of non-food goods soars, especially textiles, electronics, toys and decorations – precisely the categories most present in end-of-year festivities.
In a month that is meant to bring people closer together, we move away from what should matter: the presence, the origin, the value and the consequences of what comes into (and leaves) our home.
This excess is not limited to Christmas. It shows up in the “different” outfit for the office party, the New Year’s Eve dress code, the themed accessories for school parties, the lights and objects we buy “just for this year”.
This is where the ultra-fast approach comes in – fast fashion, fast tech, fast décor, fast gifts, fast food. Everything is designed to be cheap, arrive quickly and disappear just as fast.
Platforms like Shein and Temu have become the perfect shop window for this logic. They no longer sell just clothing; they sell practically everything that can fit in a box: dresses, Christmas pyjamas, toys with lights and sounds, kitchen gadgets, throwaway decorations, accessories for selfies and videos, electronic trinkets for gift exchanges. The catalogue is renewed at a scarcely imaginable pace: it is estimated that Shein can upload up to 10,000 new products a day, several times more than any traditional retailer could ever keep up with.
The implicit message is simple: if it is so cheap and there is always something new, it doesn’t feel worth thinking much about it. You buy it, use it, throw it away. And then repeat the cycle.
This model has three effects that rarely enter the conversation when we talk about the “festive spirit”.
The first is environmental. Every small international order carries with it a carbon footprint associated with transport, packaging, returns and, often, express shipping by air. European studies on e-commerce show that a home delivery can represent between 1 and 3 kg of CO₂ equivalent, depending on the distance and the type of service; when you multiply this by millions of low-value orders, the impact is no longer marginal.
The second effect is material. A large share of the items sold on these platforms is made from synthetic fibres derived from fossil fuels or from plastics that are hard to recycle. They last little time, break easily or simply stop interesting us when the next trend pops up on the screen. Their likely destination is the bin, adding to a flow of textile, electronic and packaging waste that municipal systems struggle to handle.
The third effect is social. Independent reports point to excessively long working hours, poor safety conditions and a lack of transparency in the supply chains associated with this kind of production. The final price we see often does not reflect the real cost for the people who make these products, nor for the communities where they eventually end up as waste.
At the same time, European statistics on waste show that the holiday period is one of the moments when we put the most pressure on environmental systems. The European Union estimates that the volume of municipal waste rises significantly in the weeks around Christmas and New Year’s, with a high share of gift packaging, bags, wrapping paper and food leftovers. Taken together, end-of-year celebrations are part of a “perfect storm”: more consumption, more packaging, more travel, more waste.
But this is not a story without alternatives. It is also, potentially, an opportunity to recentre what celebrations mean to us.
When we choose to buy locally – at a neighbourhood bookshop, a Portuguese toy store, a national clothing brand, a regional cheese or wine producer – we are making a choice with multiple impacts. On average, we shorten the distance products travel before they reach our homes, cutting the need for long-distance transport and the associated carbon footprint. We are also operating within a framework of stricter labour and environmental standards, and we keep more value in the real economy around us: wages, taxes, investment in local services and projects.
The same applies to food. Small decisions add up: planning quantities more carefully, coordinating menus with family to avoid duplication, leaving room in the plan to use leftovers instead of cooking everything from scratch at every gathering, making use of initiatives that repurpose or donate surplus food. The goal is not to “take the magic” away from the table, but to remove the waste that comes with it.
In companies, the same reasoning applies to hampers and corporate gifts. Instead of disposable giveaways from global platforms, it is possible to choose products from Portuguese producers, cultural experiences, support for social projects or vouchers for more responsible consumption. The gesture is the same – to thank, acknowledge, celebrate – but the message it sends, internally and externally, is radically different.
The central point is not to blame anyone who places an online order or buys a dress for New Year’s Eve. The point is to become aware of the system we operate in and of the role we play in maintaining or changing it. Ultra-fast platforms exist because they respond to a real demand: we want everything to be quick, cheap and unlimited. The question is whether that is really what we want to keep encouraging, especially at a time of year when we talk so much about care, sharing and the future.
Perhaps the right question this December is not “what do we still need to buy?”, but “what is worth keeping?”.
Which traditions do we want to strengthen?
Which economy do we want to nourish?
What kind of gifts – material or immaterial – do we want to remain once the lights have faded?
If every family, every company and every person makes a small detour away from the ultra-fast approach, the cumulative impact will be greater than we think. Fewer impulse orders, less food in the bin, more support for those who produce close to us. More coherence between what we say on social media and what we actually put in our baskets.
The holidays will continue to be a highlight of the year. The difference lies in deciding whether we also want them to be a peak moment for waste – or a turning point towards more conscious consumption, aligned with the future we say we want to build.
Excerpt written by Beatriz Santos
*Cover photo by freestocks on Unsplash
