Recyclers focus on mountain of old cards and Christmas trees

Britons are being urged to reduce the waste mountain of wrapping paper and greetings cards and millions of discarded trees that will be created this Christmas by making more effort to recycle their seasonal debris.

About one billion cards will be sent in Britain this year but less than 10 per cent of them are expected to be recycled, with the remainder buried in landfill sites or burnt in incinerators, a study by the Liberal Democrats' environment spokesman, Norman Baker, found.

An estimated 2.25 million tons of wrapping paper will also be thrown away, with hundreds of thousands of fake trees. Last year, about 4.7 million real trees were bought but just 1.2 million were recycled.

The Government is to launch a campaign in the new year to encourage people to recycle their Christmas trees and cards. Although it does not run a Christmas recycling programme it has endorsed a scheme run by the Woodland Trust charity. Last year the trust, with the support of public figures including the actress Prunella Scales, organised the collection by retailers of 34 million Christmas cards for recycling. This season it is ensuring recycling bins will be placed in shops such as WH Smith and Tesco next month to try to boost the number of recycled cards.

Mr Baker accused the Government of not doing enough to encourage recycling and said Britain was still "languishing near the bottom of the EU league table". He said: "Once again Britain is facing mountains of waste this Christmas and yet again the Government has done precious little to improve its plans for recycling.

"Burn-and-bury Britain must stop now. The Government must put together plans for a nationwide doorstep-recycling programme. People want to see a massive increase in recycling, re-use and waste minimisation and a reduction in landfill. The Government must make a new year's resolution to improve recycling."

The Government has admitted that "no special provision" is made by local authorities for Christmas card recycling, but it has released figures showing a huge increase in Christmas tree recycling since 1997 when only 114,000 trees were recycled in England. In 1998 the amount went up to 171,000, more than doubling to 414,000 in 1999 and rising to 729,000 in 2000. In 2001, about 900,000 trees were recycled and the number doubled this year to almost 2 million.

A spokesman for the Department of the Environment said: "The amount we throw away in this country is simply not sustainable ... The best gift that we can give to the planet is to think harder and do more to reduce the amount that goes in our bin."

* Almost a million people will be working on Christmas Day and many more will receive no holiday pay if they take the day off, according to a report published yesterday.

The TUC said there should be a statutory right to receive bank holiday pay and for three extra days off to bring Britain up to the EU average. Britain is the only country in the EU that allows employers to count bank holidays as part of the four weeks' minimum paid annual leave.