March 29, 2024

Go Green with your gift wrap

Dec. 13, 2009
Go Green... With Your Gift Wrap
By Kristi Kates
Okay, Secret Santas and gift-givers - it’s holiday gift wrapping time again. Your gifts are all picked out and purchased (right?), so now all that’s left is figuring out how to wrap them.
With our planet in even more trouble than ever before, what’s really important this year is to wrap your gifts in as environmentally-friendly a fashion as possible, especially when you consider that almost 25 million tons of extra waste are created during the holidays than would typically happen over a regular 10-week period.
According to the Environmental Protection Agency, wrapping paper is a huge part of the 25% increase in waste generation between Thanksgiving and New Year’s - and no, just throwing it in the fireplace isn’t a great idea, either, as many inks and wrapping paper foils contain toxic chemicals when burned.
Think about it this way - if every person on the planet simply re-used a mere two feet of holiday gift ribbon leftover from last year, it would save 38,000 miles of ribbon - enough to tie a whopping big red bow around the entire planet.
Now that’s recycling that’ll definitely keep coal out of your stocking (and out of our environment, too.)

DOUBLE UP
Perhaps the easiest - and least wasteful - way to wrap is to make your gift two gifts in one. A book becomes an even more portable gift “wrapped” in its own recycled-fabric book bag; perfume would be even prettier wrapped in a new silk scarf; and tools can be tucked into the pockets of a tool apron or belt for your favorite guy.
Even bigger gifts can be adorned with smaller gifts to make for one great package; fill a fancy set of mixing bowls with festive small kitchen items like sparkly salt and pepper shakers or a packet of recycled-paper napkins, or stuff a watering can with gardening gloves and lots of colorful seed packets peeking out of the top.
Cloth sacks that you can either purchase or sew yourself are also dual-duty gift wraps; the person can either reuse them to wrap a gift for someone else, or keep them around the house to keep smaller items such as socks, clothespins, or mittens organized.
Your gift recipients won’t complain about the lack of “regular” wrap when they’re getting all these little gift bonuses!

PRODUCE PAPER
There are some surprising gift-wrap options in the produce section of your local grocery store. The clear bags you use to tote your grapes or bananas home can be reused as gift bags, tied with a piece of raffia or recycled ribbon. For tiny gifts, they can be wrapped in paper-towel-blotted large lettuce leaves - especially gifts that might have a nature or outdoor theme, such as bracelet charms or small compasses.
And on a related note, places like Paper Mojo (www.papermojo.com) offer such exotic gift-wrap options as banana fiber paper, an intriguing acid-free wrap made from just what it sounds like; banana bark woven into sheets of kozo.
More kozo paper - made from the fibers of the mulberry plant - is also available from Handmade Paper at Indiamart (www.theearthpaper.net), where you can also find more tree-free papers made from things like mango, jute, and other recycled fibers.
Real Goods (www.realgoods.com) has another plant-related paper that also falls into our “double up” category - their Flower Seed Holiday wrapping paper is more than biodegradable - it’s embedded with flower seeds, so your recipient can plant it into the ground, to “grow it, not throw it” once spring arrives.

COMMERCIAL ROUTE
If you’re a truly lazy Santa’s helper, or you just want to keep things more traditional, there are plenty of places to purchase gift wrap and bags made from recycled materials. Ask your local gift wrap vendors what they have that’s recycled (if they don’t have it, and enough people ask, you can bet they’ll start ordering it if it’s available to them) - in the meantime, there are some great places online via which you can get the pretty, festive materials you’ll need.
And Lagniappe (www.lagniappegiftwrap.com) has a nifty gift bag program for their natural-fiber fabric gift bags; not only can you purchase tons of patterns from Lagniappe themselves, but you can also send in any cloth bag, and the company will repair, wash, and resell it in its special Redux line, giving you 10% off of your next purchase.
A great way to make tidy and attractive packages is to use the Japanese art of origami, or paper-folding; online or your local bookstore are terrific resources for finding books and guides on how to make origami boxes or animals within which you can hide small gifts - or, you can make the origami (in this form, called “moneygami”) into its own gift by giving paper money, either U.S. bills or even foreign currency if the person is perhaps planning to travel.

THE LITTLE THINGS
Now that you’ve got your wrapping paper - and even some of your ribbon - environmentally sourced, it’s time to put those last few finishing touches on your holiday packages.
Something you might not think about that most people use a lot of during the holidays is cellophane tape - but you can avoid it entirely (since most of it is petroleum-based) by tying your packages in two directions with the aforementioned raffia, or even something like yarn; if you’re giving your gift to someone who knits or crochets, you could even make the skein of yarn itself into a “bow” after tying the package securely.
Another way to make any package look great is with a small ornament - either an actual holiday ornament that can be reused on the tree each year, or an item from nature, such as a pine cone or a shell with a small hole punched through for easy tying.
And one more thought; who says that you have to recycle that gift wrap traditionally at all? FL Paper Designs suggests that you try framing a particularly pretty piece as wall art, using it to cover an old book, putting it under glass to make a great coffee table, or making it into drawer liners.
No matter how you tie it, with all of the above ideas, you’re all set to have a environmentally-friendly holiday.

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