Last Christmas, once all the presents were opened, we were horrified to find that we nearly completely filled our bin with wrapping paper that couldn’t be recycled. This year, we’re aiming to reduce it to almost no waste wrapping. So I’ve been looking at various ways to reduce, recycle and re-use.
1. The wrapping is the gift
Reduce is often an easy win when it comes to the environment. So ask yourself whether you need to wrap your gift. If the container, box or jar is already attractive, why not just stick a label on it and call the job done? Fabric shopping bags could be used in this way. If you’re handy at sewing or fabric painting you can even improve them for a festive look.
You can use a scarf to wrap gifts – and if you pick them up from charity shops, they needn’t be that expensive. And that leads us neatly to the topic of…
2. Cloth wraps
A few years ago a Japanese friend gave us a gift that was wrapped in a cloth known as a furoshiki. We’ve used the cloth several times since for birthday presents – but only within the household, as we’d be very sad to lose it! But I’ve bought a couple of metres of Christmas fabric that I don’t mind parting with.
The Japanese Ministry of the Environment has a handy guide to furoshiki wrapping on a variety of objects. I particularly love the double bottle wrap. I’m going to slip a printed copy into each gift in the hope that the recipients will get the message and re-use the wrapping.
3. Brown paper
Brown paper is easy to recycle with domestic waste. It is also inexpensive compared to traditional gift wrap. You can embellish the parcels with washi tape, raffia or butcher’s twine. Avoid decorating your gift-wrap with paint and glitter, as this makes it impossible to recycle. Instead, show off your creative skills by decorating the label, or by decorating the parcel with re-usable ribbon or a sprig of evergreen from the garden.
4. Re-used paper
If you can restrain yourself from ripping presents open, then it’s possible to save and re-use gift wrap. You can tape pieces together and disguise any tears with labels and embellishments. And since wrapping paper can’t be recycled anyway, you can go mad with paint and ink.
I’ve seen some stylish gifts wrapped in newspaper, too. Watch the headlines, though: a murder trial would be a bit of a downer on Christmas morning. And as with brown paper, avoid adding paint and glitter – it’s better to show off with an attractive ribbon and creative label.
Those with small children might want to take this opportunity to re-purpose some of the artwork that inevitably pours into your home. Masterpieces with paint, glitter and great blobs of glue on can’t be recycled – but there’s no reason why they shouldn’t get a last hurrah as gift wrap.
5. Gift bags and boxes
Gift bags and boxes are great because there’s no need to faff around with scissors and tape. Pop your gift in and the job is done. If you get a really nice gift bag you should definitely pass on the joy by re-using it. And you can also decorate attractive paper shopping bags, too.
Boxes and packaging could also be re-purposed as gift containers.
Justify your stash
You’ll have noticed that a lot of these ideas rely on building up a stash of papers, containers, boxes and bags. Like many people, I enjoy having a collection of things that might be useful in future. I’ve been putting likely bits into our storage unit all year as I wanted to avoid cluttering up my home with packing and wrapping material that I wouldn’t want until December. For a bit of fun I worked out how much the space was costing me within our storage unit, and it was surprisingly little. It’s all covered by my Store and Insure policy, too.
