The last thing our environment needs is carelessly discarded Christmas rubbish - Jayne Dowle

It’s not clear how they deduce this, but Defra says this waste includes 74 million discarded mince pies, out of the 175 million purchased every year, along with their estimated 175 tonnes of aluminium packaging. Key point: buy fewer mince pies. If you don’t like them, don’t buy any at all; mince pies are not a legal requirement of Christmas. At least sprouts decay gently and naturally, ideally in your own compost bin.

True, ‘Twixmas’, the hiatus between December 26 and New Year’s Eve, can leave people exhausted, so it’s tempting to bung the detritus of the season anywhere that’s easiest.

Which is why, if you drive around any country lane today, you’ll likely see piles of empty cardboard boxes, bin bags spewing a toxic mixture of turkey carcass and torn wrapping paper and possibly, already, a sorry-looking Christmas tree or two. Apparently – Defra again - the wrapping paper the UK uses each year is enough to wrap the entire island of Guernsey.

Most, but not all, wrapping paper can be recycled; you do the ‘scrunch test’ apparently, which involves screwing it into a ball. If it stays in a ball, into the recycling bin it goes. If it doesn’t, it goes in the main bin. Or burn it, but woodburning stoves and garden bonfires bring their own environmental controversies.

It’s not only rural areas blighted by rubbish at this time of year. Some people think it’s perfectly acceptable to dump their discarded Christmas items on street corners, in back lanes and communal bin areas.

The same people may also wonder why our towns and cities are increasingly plagued with rats, believed to number around 250 million in the UK now, carrying serious transmittable illnesses such as Weil’s disease into our homes and businesses.

Fly-tipping, likened to the ‘new narcotics’ by the cross-party House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee in October, because of its links to organised crime, is already a massive problem. The last thing our environment needs is careless householders carelessly chucking out Christmas rubbish, adding to the festering piles.

In its fly-tipping report the Committee highlighted the proliferation of bogus waste-disposal companies which advertise their services on local Facebook groups, offering cash-in-hand collections of household rubbish, but then dump it illegally instead of taking it to a registered waste disposal facility.

Such operations, it’s reported, are backed by organised criminal gangs, which channel the money into drugs, money laundering and modern slavery.

That might seem a very long way from finally losing patience with those dodgy fairy lights and lobbing them in the bin for general rubbish, but as well as not adding to the criminal mounds, it’s equally important to consider proper recycling.

A trip to the nearest civic amenity centre, the polite way of saying ‘the tip’ or ‘the dump-it’, is rarely high on the list of must-do excursions for a relaxing festive break, but taking time to ensure items past their useful life go where they should makes all the difference to landfill piles.

Those fairy lights, for example, can be recycled in small electrical household waste schemes, or you can find alternative safe disposal places for these and many other items through the postcode finder on the Recycle Now website.

Christmas trees too. Rather ambitiously, Defra suggests investing in a real Christmas tree with roots, which can be kept in a pot outside afterwards and re-used year after year. This is presuming perhaps, that the poor thing doesn’t end up freezing to death in a hard frost or dying in a drought (I speak from bitter experience on both counts).

Whatever you do, don’t chuck a real Christmas tree in a hedge in the hope that it will somehow provide a home for woodland creatures or gently decay into the ground. It won’t. Instead find somewhere that will recycle it into wood chips – local councils often use these for mulching parks and green spaces - or shredded and composted.

Staggeringly, Defra’s fascinating festive facts team has also found that each year, the UK throws away approximately £42m of unwanted presents, most of which end up in landfill. Meanwhile, charity shops are begging for donations, organisations which help people in need are desperate for new clothing, footwear and unused toiletries, and there is such a thing as re-gifting you know.