Plastics are pulling out all the stops for Christmas

Eco-artists are all wrapped-up in plastic

Many visual artists and designers have championed the movement of giving a second life to rubbish through what is known as upcycling. The holiday season, so conducive to overconsumption, often gives them the opportunity of getting their message across.
Sarah Turner, spearheading the ecodesign movement in England with her Christmas trees made from plastic bottles, has made a name for herself in Europe by illuminating department stores with her creations based around recycled plastic packaging. In France many visual artists committed to recycling, such as Cicia Hartmann, have followed in the footsteps of Fabrice Peltier, founder of the Designpack Gallery, who organised "A recycled Christmas" in Paris in 2010.

The trend has made a splash. Various communities are mobilising efforts to sensitise their citizens to eco-packaging. The town of Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, in France, set up the "Plastic Lights" Christmas workshop focusing on artistic recycling.
The town's museum teaches families to make jerrycan-lamps, Christmas lanterns and more from plastic objects.
In the same green spirit, the "Déchets d'arts" association puts on exhibitions and events based on recycled objects. Last June, the first "Art Récup'" festival attracted thousands of inquisitive people to discover recycled works made from plastic bottles and other objects.

Synthetic snow - even better than the real thing

Whether powdery, frosty or flocked, synthetic snow is an essential part of Christmas decorations. 

Unlike the artificial snow used in ski resorts, which is obtained by spraying water droplets, fake snow is made from weather-resistant polymers and can be used to lay down a "durable" covering of snow on Christmas trees, roundabouts, monuments or outdoor Nativity scenes.
Synthetic snow made from Teflon particles, polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), is often used for special effects and is valued for its light weight.

The other material making up the fake snow used in shop windows and Christmas events is polyacrylate, the superabsorbent polymer (SAP) best known as the main component of diapers.

Specialised vendors also stock formulations based on biodegradable resins which provide a grip on all types of surfaces and stability for the set pieces. The process also enables waste products to be recycled by transforming them into natural fertilisers.

Year after year, the artificial tree stays green

Christmas wouldn't be Christmas without the traditional tree, taking pride of place in the middle of the living room. 
Year after year, artificial Christmas trees made from PVC, polyethylene or polypropylene are making their way into an increasing number of homes. Currently, about one out of every six Christmas trees purchased each year by families at Christmas are artificial.
While it has not yet caught up with its natural competitor, it is no longer considered a "cheap" alternative to natural Christmas trees and has become a decorative object. 
The craze for artificial Christmas trees is mainly due to its increasingly less fake appearance. Thanks to the quality of the materials used, the new models, with their realistic needles and their molded branches that look like natural branches, are becoming increasingly popular.

They have become increasingly popular among communities and businesses open to the public, which are usually bastions of tradition. The main reason behind this, other than the fact that they can be re-used several years in a row, is that artificial trees are safer in terms of fire risk and safer for children who aren't likely to prick themselves on the needles or even swallow them.

A LEDy Christmas for the City of Lights

There is nothing quite like Christmas illuminations to make the holiday season less gloomy and more enchanting. Traditionally rarely seen outside of the larger cities, decorative lights have become a fixture in most boroughs throughout Europe.
Not wanting to lose the crown, the capitals are upping their game and competing in illuminating their respective emblematic monuments, following the example of Paris which lights up its Eiffel tower every year, making it a conceptual Christmas tree on the planetary scale. Much to the chagrin of most uncompromising environmentalists, who criticise the waste of energy. 
Over the past ten years, environmental concerns have led municipalities to replace energy-intensive incandescent light bulbs with LEDs, Light Emitting Diodes. The acronym refers to an electronic semiconductor covered by a thin, flexible and durable layer of protective epoxy resin.

In recent years, an increasing number of Parisian businesses and department stores have jumped on the bandwagon. As a result, the Printemps Haussmann covers its façades with 127,500 LEDs and over 1.8 km of fairy lights every year.
However, the emergence of organic light emitting diodes (OLED) resulting from the latest generation of conductive polymers is ushering in a new type of lighting, based around soft light as seen on the Oled Christmas tree created by General Electric in New-York in 2008.

Ice-less skating rinks

Each year, the businesses and streets of Europe's capitals bring out their finest decorations in November.
Department stores in Paris, London and Madrid, to name but a few, compete in putting on lavish window displays giving centrestage to toys and automata for the enjoyment of young and old alike. Whether they are robots from outer space or traditional characters, each of the animated figurines hides its precious workings under a layer of resins, latex foams or polystyrene.
City officials no longer rely on simple illuminations to attract passers-by to their Christmas markets. The ice-skating rink near the small village of chalets is extremely popular in many European cities, even in regions with a warmer climate.

The mobile, synthetic ice rinks are assembled from very high density polyethylene (called HDPE) or Teflon panels which help to overcome climatic constraints and do away with the high maintenance costs of conventional ice rinks. This results in an enjoyable skating experience for all on a surface that is hardly distinguishable from artificial ice.