DS Smith Recycling calls for families to go green this Christmas

With Christmas cards, wrapping paper, and packaging all heading home with us this Christmas, it’s important to find out how it can be recycled. DS Smith Recycling is calling for a more sustainable festive season with the launch of its Christmas recycling guidelines.

As part of a best practice for recycling at Christmas campaign, DS Smith has unveiled a festive-themed recycling infographic. As well as considering the one billion cards and 226,000 miles of wrapping paper used every year, there’s a host of helpful to increase the amount of material being recycled at Christmas.

Paper and cardboard can be recycled up to 7 times, so putting cards and wrapping paper into the right bins will make sure it can be turned into something useful once more.

Shopping around the Christmas tree

There has been a fundamental shift in residents’ shopping habits in recent years, with 90% of shoppers buying some or all of their gifts online. This means that more cardboard packaging is making its way into domestic collections, where recycling methods vary depending on individual local authorities’ infrastructure.

With the campaign, DS Smith is calling for homeowners, local authorities, and waste processers to join together and deliver great recycling from home. By raising awareness and offering advice in the run-up to Christmas, the company aims to inspire national commitment.

Tim Price, Marketing Director at DS Smith Recycling, commented: “Over the festive period, local authorities and recycling companies across the UK gear up to manage larger volumes of recycling. Thanks to the rise in online shopping, sometimes called the ‘Amazon effect’, these figures continue to grow, with more packaging than ever before being collected from domestic streams. At Christmas, we recycle up to 25% more packaging from residential collections than we do at other times of the year.

“With reprocessors using this material to make new products, it’s up to all of us to minimise contamination and to produce good quality materials for recycling. By doing so, we can all enjoy a more sustainable Christmas.”

DS Smith manages more than five million tonnes of paper and card for recycling every year across Europe – including lots of wrapping paper, cards, and cardboard boxes.