Eco-Friendly Gift Wrap

Enlarge Image Image Gallery Avoid this mess this holiday season. Photos by Povy Kendal Atchison

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

Each year between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, Americans produce an extra five million tons of trash, including 38,000 miles of ribbon—enough to tie a bow around the earth. But with a little creativity and planning, much of this waste can be prevented. Start by saving old wrapping paper, bows, and ribbon to reuse next year. Don’t throw out wrapping paper just because it’s torn; you can strategically place bows and ribbon over the ripped areas.

If you must use new gift wrap, buy recycled paper. Also consider using bags, cloth gift wrap, gift boxes, and baskets. Each person can add his or her own decoration to these pass-along items, giving the exchange a personal dimension and history. Gift bags, boxes, and cloths can last through at least five gifts, while baskets can last forever or be kept and used for something else.

For a little creativity in the gift wrap department, try some of the following ideas:

• Innovative gift wrapping. Often the best gift wrap is old stuff that’s already lying around your house, including magazines, newspapers, maps, and posters. Scraps of material also make good wrapping paper. Old paper bags, shopping bags (everyone has plenty of these!), and recyclable cardboard boxes work, too.

• Give gifts within a gift. No decorating required: Just buy a scarf or shirt— preferably something that the recipient could wear or use—and wrap the present in it.

• Give gifts unwrapped. Just tie some beautiful, reusable ribbon around the gift for a nice touch.

• Post-holiday uses. When the holidays are over, line shelves and drawers with leftover wrapping paper, donate it to schools for art projects, or shred it and use it in place of Styrofoam peanuts when mailing packages.

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print

Comments

Add Your Comment

You can use this comment form to enter your personal experiences or additional information and resources that you'd like to share with Natural Home readers. Your helpful advice will be posted on this page.  E-mail addresses are never displayed on comments, but they are required to confirm your comments.

Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br> tags.

Loading ...

New to Natural Home Magazine? Sign up to share comments. Asterisks(*) indicate required fields. Name* Your name appears next to your comment. E-mail Address* This will be your login ID. City State Zip Code Password* Confirm Password*

Have you signed up before? Please log in before you enter your comment. E-mail Address Password Forgot your password?

Comments

1500 character limit (Offensive materials and/or spam will be removed, no HTML allowed)

Please Note: Your sign-up must be verified via e-mail before your comment is published.