We all love Christmas, but we can easily forget that this time of the year is one of the most wasteful. As a part of Norwich School’s Green Group, Ella Cunningham shares her views on how we can all make a few simple changes to make holiday kinder to the planet we live on...

"If anything signals the start of Christmas, it is the sending of Christmas cards to friends and family. Every year in the UK, however, it is estimated that around 1 billion cards are thrown away after the 25th of December, and many of these are rendered non-recyclable by the addition of foil or glitter. For a planet-friendlier alternative, send E-cards or ones that you know can be recycled. For an even more creative way of using your old Christmas cards, why not turn the front designs into next year’s gift tags  instead of sending them to the bin?

The joy of presents

It can be tempting to buy extra presents to fill the gaps under the Christmas tree, however, of all the purchases made for Christmas in the UK, it has been suggested that only 1% will remain in use six months later. This year, opt for quality over quantity – a present that has a lot of thought behind it will be a more valued than a pile of unwanted ones.

Another easy way to make your Christmas greener is to switch how you wrap your presents. Every year, it is believed that the amount of wrapping paper thrown away at Christmas in the UK alone would stretch to the moon – and much of this brightly coloured, patterned paper is plastic based and therefore can’t even be recycled. In place of wasteful wrapping, buy recycled or FSC-certified paper, which can be processed again for a beautiful, planet friendly gift.

While wrapping this year, go easy on the sticky tape. Over 1 million rolls of this non-reusable, non-recyclable product are estimated to be used every Christmas Eve. As a result, this sticky tape (and sometimes the otherwise recyclable cardboard boxes it is attached to) will remain in landfill for years. Fortunately, reducing your sticky-tape footprint is easy: there are ways of wrapping a present by just folding the wrapping paper, or you could try the traditional Japanese way of wrapping, furoshiki. This involves wrapping a cloth around the gift, for a classy, unique and countlessly re-usable alternative.

The Christmas Turkey

Many would argue that food is the pinnacle of Christmas, and there is nothing better than facing a table full of festive food, but how much of it do you actually eat? Recent research suggests that every year, the equivalent of more than four million Christmas dinners are thrown away, including 7.5 million mince pies, 11.3 million roast potatoes and enough gravy to fill an Olympic sized swimming pool. Buy what you need and know you will eat; and even if you do end up buying too much, don’t just throw it away. There are many ways to turn you Christmas leftovers into a new, delicious meal.

Plastic waste is a huge problem at Christmas time, with millions of tonnes of it being the Christmas present for landfills each year. A large contributor to this waste is the humble Christmas cracker. Although fun to have at a meal, most people put their cracker gifts in the bin at the end of the day (or even the end of the meal!). Even if you make just one simple change to help the environment this Christmas, an easy thing to do is to buy recyclable Christmas crackers, or even make your own with personalised gifts which will be treasured instead of discarded."