With the average Christmas dinner reportedly clocking up the equivalent of two journeys around the world in food miles, staging an ethical Christmas is no easy task

All that giving and receiving can end in one big day of over-indulgence and waste.

While it's tempting to head to the local supermarket to load up on everything we need for Christmas dinner (and the rest), there are some simple ways to tick as many organic, sustainable and ethical boxes as possible. Your head may not be clear post-party, but your conscience will be.

Food

The piece de resistance of any Christmas dinner is the meat. Whether you're going for turkey, ham, or a more upmarket duck, goose or pheasant, the golden rule is simple: don't buy your intensively-reared meat from the supermarket.

It may be more expensive, but top-quality, ethically-produced meat is a wise investment. Shuffle your budget and resist temptation to overspend on other products. Think about all the uneaten food you bin every year, not to mention all the unnecessary calories you consume.

The Ginger Pig butcher in London have become one of the most respected organic meat producers in Britain, rearing rare breeds of pig, cattle and sheep on the Yorkshire Moors.

Avoid jet-lagged fruit and vegetables that have circumnavigated the earth in a state of suspended ripening. Buy your vegetables from a local farmer's market and buy loose, local produce free from plastic packaging, often at a fraction of the price.

Sign up to award-winning organic home delivery service Abel and Cole and you'll have fresh, organic and seasonal vegetables, and other ethical products, delivered to your door. Their organic Christmas range includes all the trimmings, from meat to mince pies and brandy butter.

Smoked salmon and Champagne is quintessentially Christmas, but choose your salmon carefully. Bleiker's Smokehouse is a family-run business based in the Yorkshire Dales. They pride themselves on traditionally curing and smoking organic Scottish salmon, free from colourings, additives or preservatives, with an organic range also available.

After dinner, sweeten your guests with some Burnt Sugar fudge, made with Fair Trade sugar from West Kenya.

Wine

Unlike food, buying locally-produced wine may not reduce your carbon footprint. Believe it or not, driving your car just a few miles to pick up a bottle of local wine will omit more carbons per bottle than a shipment of wine from the Antipodes.

But it's estimated that buying organic wine will reduce your carbon footprint by up to 50 per cent through the reduced use of chemicals. Supermarkets tempt us with irresistibly cheap offers on alcohol, but companies like Ethical Fine Wines specialise in organic, biodynamic and carbon-neutral wine.

Christmas just isn't Christmas without a glass or three of the bubbly stuff, usually Champagne. But due to heavy use of synthetic chemicals to treat rot, Champagne is one of the most polluted wine regions in the world.

Look out for certified organic Champagne such as Larmandier-Bernier 1er Cru Non Vintage Brut (£20.95) which has been produced using biodynamic practices (farming according to planetary calendar and natural homeopathic soil preparations).

No room in the fridge? Store cold drinks outside, reducing the amount of electricity required to keep your fridge cold by minimising the number of times you have to open the door.

Leftovers

The presents have been opened, the guests have gone, and there's a mountain of leftovers in the fridge. If you're a keen gardener, turning your scraps and leftovers into compost for the garden is an appropriate finale to your ethical Christmas, creating nutrient-rich soil ready for planting next year's brussels sprouts.

If that's just one ethical step too far, there are plenty of recipe ideas for when you just can't face yet another turkey sandwich. Once the bird has been stripped, it's criminal not to boil the carcass down with a few leeks and onions to make a flavoursome stock that can be the basis of a Thai curry (also using the leftover meat), soup or risotto.

Uneaten meat such as beef or lamb can be minced to make a shepherd's or cottage pie, while leftover vegetables that are threatening to shrivel up can be thrown together to make a hearty winter soup for the freezer.

Events

If you're in Edinburgh this December 6 - 14, the Ethical Christmas Fayre is worth a visit. As well as fair trade and sustainable gifts, this event will sell ethical food and wine products.