Secret Santa - I ain’t buyin’ it!

Manifesto are working hard to be mindful of how sustainable we are as a company, and where we can be less harmful to our environment. With Christmas around the corner, we thought it was a great opportunity to share our thinking, which led us to our I Ain’t Buyin’ it campaign!

Last year, an estimated 103,000 tonnes of plastic waste was unwrapped on Christmas day. That’s an estimated 20% of gifts – some 120m items – headed for landfill on Boxing Day. A portion of that plastic waste came from the dreaded Secret Santa gift giving.

So this Christmas we’ve ditched that dash towards plastic tat for Secret Santa, and said “I Ain’t Buyin’ it!” Instead, we’ve spent that time and energy enjoying the company of our colleagues. We’re promoting quality time, and we’re encouraging others to do the same.

Understanding that you could be perceived as the office Scrooge for cancelling Secret Santa, we crafted a persuasive argument to recruit fellow colleagues, letting them know they’re worth more than a Secret Santa gift (and the planet is too!).

Our Experience team created some games to play this festive season, including ‘The Gif that keeps giving’, and even made a virtual ‘Nice List’ featuring charity gifts and memberships, for those who really, really had to buy something.

We built the campaign on a sustainable website, which meant that (based on testing) 0.35g of carbon will be produced when someone visits a page on the site. The worst that has been tested on Website Carbon is 190g, which is about the same as the amount of carbon emitted when making four cups of white tea (with cows milk)!

Overall the site is less polluting than 84% of the websites tested (about 60,000); which we think is pretty awesome.

So, with Christmas less than a week away, if you’re planning a last ditch attempt at Secret Santa gift purchasing; think again. Wouldn’t it be better, more enjoyable for all involved, and kinder to the planet, to say, “I ain’t buyin’ it”?