You've spent hours carefully selecting gifts for your loved ones. You've painstakingly wrapped each present. You bought wine and food and spent hours in the kitchen.

But by Boxing Day it is all over and now all that is left is to dispose of your Christmas waste responsibly.

So how much of the plastic, glass and paper that you use over the festive season can be recycled?

Champagne corks, broken glass, smashed plates a no-go

Wine bottles and soft drink cans can certainly go in the recycling bin, but corks, now mostly found only in champagne bottles, cannot.

"There used to be a program for corks and it was run by the Girl Guides and they would collect them and send them off to a cork maker in Victoria who would turn them into things like insulation and flooring," Brad Gray, head of campaigns for Planet Ark, said.

Understanding how recycling plants work is vital to cleaning up from Christmas correctly. ( ABC News: Sally Brooks )

"With the invention of screw tops the value of new corks dropped so much that it's not economic to collect and recycle them anymore."

The corks have to go to landfill unless you can find a use for them at home, like a children's craft project.

Glass containers can be recycled, but if you break a wine glass or smash a plate the broken pieces generally cannot be recycled and should go in the general bin, Mr Gray said.

"Pieces of drinking glass or mirror or ceramics, they don't melt at the same temperature as bottles and jars in the recycling process.

"You can't actually use that glass again to make new bottles."

The only exceptions to this rule is for people in a number of Perth councils and Ballina and Lismore on the New South Wales north coast.

"In those councils they don't use the glass to make new bottles, they use the glass and ceramics to make road base, so it doesn't need to melt and you can put it in the recycling bin."

Paper or plastic?

This is where being eco-friendly at Christmas gets very complicated and you really have to understand exactly how recycling works.

Only certain kinds of paper and plastic can be recycled. ( Lawrence Palk: ABC News )

The issue is that household recycling plants are set up to deal with only some items.

"Plastic ice-cream containers, milk bottles or margarine containers — the system is designed to deal with those shapes and sizes," Mr Gray said.

"What the system cannot deal with are things that are a completely different shape to containers.

"It's not designed to deal with the plastic that goes around a really big toy.

"Plastic knives and forks are entirely the wrong shape and the system can't detect that they are there. They can't separate them out.

"Broken plastic toys ... can't go in the recycling either."

Plastic cups and glasses are 3D in shape, so they can be recycled, but plastic plates are likely to mistaken by the machines for paper, so should not be placed in the recycling bin.

Aluminium foil trays used in the oven can be recycled, but should be rolled into a ball so they are also not mistaken for paper.

Wrapping paper can also be recycled, even if it has sticky tape attached, because the machines can filter the tape out in the pulping process, but it has to be paper wrapping — plastic cellophane or metallic wrapping has to go to landfill.

Tree looking worse for wear

A plastic Christmas tree, if it needs to be thrown out, also cannot be recycled and has to go to landfill.

Check with your local council about the best way to dispose of your Christmas tree. ( Supplied: Oxfam Australia )

A real tree might be able to go in the organic waste bin if the trunk is small, but it is best to check with your council first as many offer specific services for disposing of Christmas trees.

"What happens with your organic bin is that the contents go off to a composting system," Mr Gray said.

"A branch that is more than about 10 centimetres thick will not compost — it needs to go through a chipping service rather than a composting service.

"Your council can tell you what to do with them."

What about unwanted gifts?

"Regift them," Mr Gray advised of presents that don't quite hit the mark.

"Hide it in the back of the cupboard and remember who gave it to you. Don't get caught giving it back to your mum."

He also suggested going shopping with people you are buying for or asking people what they would like to avoid giving disappointment.