Five ways to recycle Christmas

The cards have been opened, the presents are unwrapped and we’re stuffed to the brim with delicious Christmas food, but now the house is a tip! Instead of throwing it all away though, try these top tips for reducing Christmas waste.

Not all wrapping paper is recyclable, so be sure to double check. If it only contains paper, then it should be fine, but many are made of foil or plastic, or covered in glitter, so these have to be thrown away seperately. If you're not sure if it's paper or not, try to scrunch it into a ball. If it scrunches, and stays scrunched, it can probably be recycled. 

If you want to get more creative with your leftover wrapping paper though, there are lots of ways you can reuse it, from decorating school books to making paper confetti and bunting for a New Years party!

If you have any cardboard boxes, why not try getting creative and using your imagination to turn them into something new and exciting?

Opening cards to see who they're from is great fun for little ones, and once Christmas is over there are some brilliant ways to reuse them. Why not try using them to make decorations, gift tags or thank you cards? This is a great family activity to pass the time between Christmas and New Year!

Christmas trees are one of the best bits of Christmas as we do lots of our celebrating around them, so it can feel a bit sad taking them down in January. Did you know that if you have a real tree, you can recycle it so it gets a second life? 

There are lots of councils and companies who will take your tree and make sure it's put to good use. They can be used as chipping for pathways or even turned into compost that can even help next year's trees grow!

Christmas is filled with lots of wonderful food and there is lots of ways to recycle the things we eat at Christmas that can really help reduce waste. Leftover Christmas dinner can be used to make other delicious recipes such as these ones, so why not see if you can find a great recipe for that left over turkey!

If you’ve got a food compost bin, this is also a good place to put your vegetable peelings and food scraps (just not meat or dairy products).

Your little ones may have some toys that they've grown out of and if they've been lucky, they might have some new gifts and toys to make room for. Why not donate them to somebody who might really love to have them?

Letting your child hand donate the toys to a charity can teach them about sharing with people who may not have received any gifts this christmas.