Reusing Christmas waste

You can upcycle the downside of Christmas, says Ruth

- Ruth Hayes

I LOVE the festive season, but I’m driven to despair by the piles of packaging and drifts of wrapping paper that accumulate round the house each Christmas.

This year we are, as a family, making a conscious effort to be more environmental and avoid plastic packaging and gifts wherever possible.

Luckily the garden is an excellent facility for using and reusing any commercial detritus that is part and parcel of the modern-day Christmas.

Below I suggest four easy and fairly obvious ways of breathing new life into some of your festive throw-aways, but it’s also worth considering some slightly more obscure ideas.

If you’ve had enough Mariah Carey and Wham! to last a lifetime, save those old scratched festive CDs and hang them over vulnerable seedbeds to scare the birds away.

Wrapping paper can be shredded and added to the compost, while metallic wrapping that you can’t recycle can be cut into strips and hung around the garden as effective bird scarers.