We're being encouraged to cut down on Christmas waste.

It estimates 1600 tonnes of wrapping paper are used in New Zealand every Christmas and 25,000 tonnes of plastic packaging waste is expected to be discarded.

Sarah Pritchett from WasteMINZ told Mike Yardley there's also more food waste generated over Christmas.

“One of the ways to avoid that is sit down with a meal plan writing out what you want to have for Christmas Day and all those other social functions, and then writing a list based on that plan rather than just going out and filling up the shopping trolley.”

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