The tradition of giving gifts didn’t start with the modern holidays we celebrate. Many ancient cultures celebrated holidays with the exchange of gifts. People who love to give gifts often can’t wait until it’s time for the recipients to open their gifts. If you’ve ever been given a gift, you know that part of the fun is the curiosity that builds as you wonder what the gift is.

The wish to hide the identity of a gift until just the right moment led people to wrap gifts long, long ago. Historians believed wrapping gifts in paper probably started not long after paper was invented thousands of years ago.

Wrapping paper like what we use today, though, is a much more recent invention. More than 100 years ago, gifts were usually wrapped in heavy brown paper. Before that, cloth was often used. The technology to mass-produce wrapping paper didn’t come along until the early 1900s. The first American gift wrap company— Hy-Sill Manufacturing Inc. — was founded by Eli Hyman and Morris Silverman in 1903. It wasn’t as easy to wrap presents back then as it is today, though, because adhesive tape (胶带) wasn’t invented until 1930.

Over the years, wrapping paper has developed into what we see in stores each holiday season. But scientists say that the United States alone produces an extra 5 million tons of waste over the holidays, most of which is from wrapping paper and shopping bags. To cut down on this waste, some people carefully unwrap presents, so that the wrapping paper can be reused. Others have started to use reusable gift bags instead of wrapping paper.

According to the WHO, 90 percent of the world’s population lives in a place where they are exposed to unsafe levels of airborne pollutants, contributing to up to seven million deaths each year. If you live in a city, chances are that you’re part of that 90 percent, even if your city is relatively clean. That’s why cities worldwide have started embracing Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.

One of the best ways to fight pollution is to figure out where it’s worst and where it’s coming from. If you’ve ever made a habit of checking air quality around you, you may notice that there aren’t actually that many monitoring stations, and your closest one may not be that close. For pollution data to really be accurate and helpful, we need a lot more of it.

Luckily, IoT sensors and low-power wide-area networks are making it a lot easier to get and spread ultra-local data. Lampposts are one popular place to put them. For example, the Republic of Korea and Barcelona have already built out a network of pollution sensors in their streetlights.

On the other hand, outfitting (配备) cars, bikes, and even people with pollution sensors provide valuable data on a smaller, more mobile scale.

Since pollutant levels can change dramatically even from one city block to another, having smaller-scale data is important for making a lot of decisions that, over time, might have a major influence on our health and behavior. It can influence where we decide to live, when we exercise, whether we bike to work, and, perhaps most importantly, what we can do about pollution in our area.

All the Internet of Things can help us do on a personal level is use less energy. The data it provides, though, can be used to make big and small changes to the way we behave and build, and that is eventually where we’ll see benefits.

Jake Oldershaw and his daughter Mollie from Birmingham, Britain have asthma (哮喘). Mollie, 11, has required hospital treatment several times while Jake Says he always finds breathing more difficult when there is heavy traffic. Air quality has an enormous impact on their lives and both noticed a marked improvement during the spring lockdown because of the epidemic (疫情). Jake said, “During lockdown there was a noticeable difference in air quality. I didn't suffer any asthmatic attacks during that period. These days you can feel the effects.”

However, under current COVID-19 restrictions in the UK this winter, many people probably will have to work from home. The Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU) says while emissions (排放) have dropped this year because we've been travelling less and doing less, the expected use of gas boilers to provide heating and hot water could rise by more than half.

Heating accounts for nearly 37% of the UK's total carbon emissions. Modelling by the ECIU suggests a 56% increase in boiler usage this winter resulting in a 12% increase in emissions of carbon. The ECIU says that's enough to offset the last two years' worth of progress on reducing traffic emissions.

Jess Ralston, author of the analysis for the ECIU, said, “Working from home and having increased gas use in the home could be really critical for air pollution and also climate change. The way we heat our homes needs to change if we are to get to net zero by 2050.”

Jess Ralston said, “The increase in pollution from gas boilers expected this winter provides a graphic illustration (图解) of their forgotten role in air pollution. And it is a role set to continue without practical policies to decarbonize home heating. ”

The government is set to publish its Heat and Buildings Decarbonisation Strategy in a few weeks which is expected to give details on plans to try to switch British homes to cleaner sources of heat.