Christmas all wrapped up.

As the days tick closer towards Christmas, the retail machine cranks up to full speed, shopping for presents, festive foods and decorations to brighten up your home.

While many people look forward to the opportunity to spoil loved ones with gifts, we’re now more aware of the packaging and waste we generate at this time of year.

The average person in the UK handles over 50 types of packaging every single day and this figure grows in the build up to Christmas.

125,000 tonnes of plastic packaging is used during the festive period in the UK alone.

Over 3,000 tonnes of that is down the packaging around the turkey.

Research from the comparison site Gocompare.com Energy shows that all the turkeys cooked for Christmas day will generate around 14,000 metric tonnes of CO2

Consumer group Which shows that packaging makes up approximately half of total weight of chocolate sold at Christmas, your selection box is all show rather than substance and the little gold ball that ‘spoil us’, Ferrero Rocher is 42% packaging and 58% product.

Consumers in the UK are set to use 227,000 miles of wrapping paper, and over 83km2 of this will end up in our bins.

Research by Greenpeace found that 1kg of wrapping paper is responsible for more than 3kg of CO2 emissions, due to the 1.3kg of coal needed to manufacture it. And, the vast majority of wrapping paper is not recyclable, as much of it contains some form of plastic, either glitter or laminated.

Remember to do the scrunch test – as not all types of wrapping paper can be recycled. The easiest way to determine this is to scrunch the wrapping paper in your hand, and if the paper remains scrunched it’s recyclable. If it springs back it’s more than likely to be covered with a plastic film which can’t be recycled.

An extra 30% of rubbish is produced and discarded throughout the festive period when compared with the rest of the year.

Biffa – a waste management company – also suggests that more than 100 million bags of rubbish are sent to landfill each Christmas.

But we are keen to change these environmentally destructive practices, Go Ultra Low conducted a survey which suggested 72% were keen to reduce their plastic waste this Christmas.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the majority of those most concerned about Christmas waste are either millennials (aged 24-35) or Gen Z (aged 18-24).