This year we really wanted to take into consideration the amount of waste we all create during the holiday season. Christmas is the time for giving, and that means a lot of wrapping paper, gift bags, tissue paper, ribbons etc. While some of these can be recycled, there are often some non-paper additives that go into wrapping paper that cannot be recycled.
There are a few solutions to this problem! One solution being, not wrapping your gifts at all, but really, where’s the fun in that? The second solution is using scarves or old (but still useable) towels or sheets to wrap up your gifts! It gives purpose to an item that would have otherwise been thrown away. You can also get these materials from a second hand store! The third solution, and the one we decided to roll with this year, is using fully recyclable, second hand materials to wrap our gifts!
This is an inexpensive and efficient way to save the planet while wrapping your gifts during the holidays, or even any other event throughout the year that requires gifts! You can use recycled brown packing paper that you can buy in bulk at stores like Staples! It’s all fully recyclable and it gives you an out of the box, rustic vibe to your gift wrapping. We could have gone the packing paper route, but we wanted to do something a little different. Instead we went to a local second hand book store called The Book Shop and bought a few old maps to do our wrapping! It’s super different and is quite eye catching. You could even get maps that have a meaning to you; we bought some maps of BC, Ontario, Yosemite etc. It’s also a very inexpensive material for gift wrapping with some of the maps as low as 25 cents each!
We decided to take it a little further and used some twine (as opposed to ribbon) to decorate our gifts while in keeping with the rustic appearance. On some of the gifts we labelled who it was for with calligraphy initials. On the others we made some DIY tags from recycled brown paper bags! It’s really a fun way to get creative this holiday season!
Tells us what you think!
Would you try sustainable gift wrapping?
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