Australians to bin 825,000 gifts this Christmas: survey

Beach goers wearing Santa Claus hats survey conditions before swimming at Queenscliff Beach in Sydney December 24, 2006.[Agencies]

SYDNEY - Generosity doesn't always pay during the festive season, with an Australian survey showing more than 825,000 gifts will go straight into the garbage bin this Christmas because their recipients just hate them.

The survey, commissioned by an Australian-based online self-publishing website and based on population data, revealed a third of all respondents either refund gifts or give them away, especially off-the-shelf offerings.

"An estimated 6.4 million presents will be given away, refunded, re-gifted or binned in 2009," Jo Sabin from website Blurb Australia said in a statement.

"That's a lot of wasted effort and money. The top tip for making sure that your gift is kept and valued this Christmas is to personalize it."

The survey also highlighted that more than 55 percent of all women are guilty of re-gifting unwanted presents for their friends and one in five will return the gift directly to the store.

With Australia's economy still battling to shake off the effects of the global financial crisis, more than a third of Australians plan to spend less on Christmas gifts this year, compared with the previous year, according to a recent survey by the Melbourne Institute and Westpac Bank.