Just this week in the office, we were trading tips on how to reduce our waste during the festive season. Amy has been sorting out gift experiences for her family rather than physical presents. Carla has been busy making foody gifts for her family. And Georgie has been busy stamping brown paper to make festive wrapping that is recyclable. Sometimes it seems like a lot of effort to try to create less Christmas waste, however, it’s worth it. It’s been reported that, here in the UK, an extra 3 million tonnes of waste is produced over the festive period. But where does it all come from?

Let’s talk packaging. In our touch-of-a-button instant world, a vast number of Christmas presents are bought online, with 74% of gifts bought in the UK coming from online retailers. This may mean fewer vehicles on the road, however, online shopping creates a whopping 4.8 times more waste than the equivalent spent offline. This is a shocking fact, especially when 75% of UK adults want less packaging in their online orders, and for retailers to use more environmentally friendly packaging. It’s worth taking a look at which brands use sustainable packaging in order to make an informed choice this Christmas and avoid unnecessary waste. 

“It came without ribbons, it came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags.” — The Grinch

Dr Seuss

Wrapping paper is also a large contributor to Christmas time waste, with the equivalent of 180 million rolls of the stuff being binned in the UK each year. We recommend using recyclable wrapping paper and ensuring everything goes in the green bin on the big day. You can check if your wrapping paper is recyclable by doing the “scrunch test”. Simply scrunch the wrapping paper into a ball. If it keeps its shape, chances are it’s recyclable. Non-recyclable wrapping paper will have a plastic coating that prevents it from staying in a scrunched-up ball. Reusable gift bags are also a great way to reduce your Christmas waste. 

It’s not just the paper and packaging that makes up the enormous amount of waste. Shockingly, according to businesswaste.co.uk, £ 42 million worth of unwanted Christmas presents go to landfill every year. This is sobering, especially when the cost of living will make it hard for some families to give any presents this year. You can avoid the gift-to-garbage pipeline by gifting experiences rather than material goods, and donating any unwanted gifts instead of binning them. 

Christmas dinner is always a favourite part of Christmas Day, however, 7 in 10 people admit to buying more food than they need over Christmas. A huge amount of food gets wasted, with 2 million turkeys, 17 million brussel sprouts, 2 million kilos of cheese, 74 million mince pies and 7.1 million pigs in blankets being thrown away by Brits over Christmas each year. We know Christmas is a time of over-indulgence. But this year, we recommend being realistic with your food shopping. And, if you have food waste, try composting or checking if your local area has a food waste collection service. You could even donate any leftover suitable food items to your local food bank.

Lastly, let’s talk about plastic, which is our figurative bread and butter here at Final Straw Foundation. Unfortunately, the UK generates around 125,000 tonnes of plastic waste at Christmas. A large proportion of the population is keen to reduce their plastic waste, so we have hopes that this number will go down. An often unexpected source of plastic waste comes from the plastic microfibers in Christmas jumpers, with a large amount of these microplastics coming out in the wash and polluting our waterways. Astonishingly, a third of young adults buy a new Christmas jumper each year. You can find out how to reduce Christmas jumper waste and participate in a Christmas jumper swap here. An important part of reducing plastic waste comes from consumption. If you can, try to use plastic-free alternatives, such as loose fruit and veg for Christmas dinner, and gifts wrapped in paper rather than plastic. However, we know not everything has a more sustainable alternative. If you do find yourself with plastic waste over this festive period, make sure you know what can and can’t be recycled kerbside, and take anything else to be recycled separately at your local plastic recycling points (this could be at your local Co-op or at a Terracycle recycling point). You can find out about your local kerbside recycling here. 

We hope this blog post has helped you feel more informed about Christmas waste, and more empowered to do your bit to prevent it.  As always, we know no one is perfect so even taking one or two tips from this post will make a massive difference. If you have any questions about what else you can do to reduce your waste at Christmas, or at any time of the year, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. From all of us at the Final Straw Foundation, we hope you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.