Other top tips to reduce your Christmas food waste include:

• Forward plan, and make a list before your big Christmas shop – this will stop you over-buying and ensures you buy exactly what you need
• Freeze leftover food so you have tasty treats for lunch when you return to work/school after the festive season
• Compost your food waste, Christmas tree and holly
• Check out lovefoodhatewaste.com for tasty ways to use up leftovers. Stray slivers of smoked salmon can cheer up your Boxing Day eggs, and leftover stilton can be popped in the freezer to use another time
• It may be cold outside but you also need to check that your fridge is cold enough too.  Chilled food will stay fresh for longer if you keep the fridge at a cool 1-5 degrees.
• Our most perishable (and often most expensive) Christmas food is kept in the fridge, so keep tabs on their use-by dates - the freezer may be the option for food you won't get round to eating in time and you can enjoy them well after Christmas is over.
• Lemons, apples and tomatoes stay fresh for even longer in the fridge. And keeping them in a loosely tied plastic bag or in the pack they were bought, helps them retain their moisture. Brits throw away 1.6bn apples every year, costing us £317m!
• You can freeze your excess Christmas cheese – hard cheeses can be frozen grated to use on pizza toppings or cheese on toast without defrosting. Stilton freezes really well without grating and can be defrosted for the cheese board or for a quiche or soup. Did you know over 17,000 tonnes of open cheese is thrown away each year?

Fab food facts

• To freshen up your loaf of bread, hold it very briefly under a running cold tap. Give it a good shake and pop in a hot oven for about 10 minutes; it will be lovely and crusty
• Did you know that putting bread in your fridge won’t keep it fresh? In fact, it will make it go stale quicker! All is not lost though as bread is perfect for the freezer. More bread is thrown away while in date than any other foodstuff. You can freeze your Christmas crumpets too – 9,000 tonnes of them are thrown away yearly!
• Use vegetables twice - Keep the onion left over from making bread sauce. Chop it and mix into the stuffing for the bird.
• Chestnuts are highly perishable because of their low fat content. To keep them fresh enough to use for a week or so, put them in a plastic bag in the salad drawer of the fridge. Freeze those you don’t wish to eat over Christmas and enjoy them in the New Year. We waste 1,100 tonnes of nuts over the course of each year.
• The most important date to remember at Christmas is the 'use by' date. ‘Best before’ is for quality rather than indicating when a food goes off ‘Sell by’ and ‘display until’ are for the store staff only. Over a third of consumers treat ‘best before’ dates as the same as ‘use by’ ones.
• Did you know potatoes are the most wasted food item? We throw away 359,000 tonnes of them every year. Alternatively they could be turned into a great salad with mayonnaise and spring onions.
• Remember you can also refrigerate leftover custard from your Christmas pudding: we waste almost 36,000 tonnes of milk puddings every year