eco-friendly gift-wrapping tips!
Once you've chosen thoughtful, eco-friendly gifts for your loved ones, the challenge is to wrap them without contributing to the extra 5 million tons of garbage generated in the US each holiday season (that's about 25% more garbage than we generate at other times of year!). Girlie Girl Army has a couple of great ideas for cutting down on waste:
- Wrap gifts in old newspaper or thrift store fabrics and ribbons
- Use brown paper bags (although hopefully you don't have a tone of these, because you are using your resusable canvas bags), or get creative with magazines and even junk mail (hopefully you have stopped your junk mail. If you haven't, go here to learn how).
For any gifts we give, we save ribbon, boxes and paper all year round from gifts we have received. And we just use all of that to make our gift wrap. What other gift-wrapping ideas do you have?
12 comments
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Origami must be the source for folding the gorgeous bow pictured? The Japanese traditional gift wrap is a beautiful fabric, laid under the gift and opposing corners knotted over the gift. Of course, silk is out! My wife used to use the Sunday funnies, which I admit was hardly ecological. I don't read the funnies, and did not think it was particularly attractive, but of course, loving her seeing her creativity gave me a chance to love = unwrapped my heart as I unwrapped the gift - which is the point, after all. Wonderful blog Alicia! -
I ordered a lot of my gifts on line so they came in their own cardboard box. I decided that it was horrible to waste the boxing so I used ribbons and bows (most from previous years) and gave the gifts in the brown boxes. When my kids first saw the gifts, they laughed but after explaining why I did it they thought it was cool that I was greening Christmas.
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Several years ago, I was given this idea by a friend. After Christmas, I purchased clearance holiday print fabric en mass. Then I went about using it to make drawstring bags of various sizes. Every year, I just bring the bags out of the attic, along with the stockings and holiday decorations. (Usually, I give them a quick wash so that they smell fresh and clean.) Then my family uses them to wrap their gifts for one another in. It's become such a lovely holiday tradition, seeing all of our pretty gift bags under the tree every year. It's also been a huge money saver over the years; being able to skip the purchasing of paper, tape and disposable bows.
It's also a nice idea to pass these on to friends, with the instructions of passing it on themselves. That way, you start a cycle of passing around your gift wrap...and you never know, one of the pretty bags you made yourself might come back to you someday!
This is great for birthdays, Valentine's Day, get well soon gifts...or any other reason we find to give gifts or celebrate! Just use the fabric of your choice!
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I have used all-recycled materials for wrapping for a few years, and it makes my wrapped gifts completely unique and creative. I have used: newspaper, pages from magazines, pieces of mail, maps picked up on road trips, tissue paper and boxes from anything that has been shipped to me. I use fabric ribbons and save them to use again and again.
One addition for this year: I estimated how much money I would have spent if I had chosen to buy new wrapping paper, and donated that amount to a charitable organization of my choice.
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I made the bow shown out of some magazines I had that were going to be recycled...it turned out so cute! I love these ideas!!! No more buying new wrapping paper for me!
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I know it is better to buy oranges without the orange net bag... but if you do have this bag, it ties into an unexpectedly awesome bow.
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I originall was going to use newspaper, but I was worried that the ink might get the carpet dirty etc.... Magazines would work better for sure, but we don'y really have any around the house. I bet you could buy them at the second hand store tho. BUT I did use all the gift bags that I had received from other people last year etc, and when I ran out of those, used cream colored and white pillow cases, and then tied them shut with ribbon I already had. I think I will elaborate on this idea next year and go to the second hand store and buy fabric to make cloth ribbons, and make cloth gift bags with drawstrings or something :)
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What a brilliant idea... Strangely enough, my sister hand-made a gift bag for my birthday present this year. She carefully chose the pages so that there were no advertising of meat, dairy, fur, animal-tested products on it... How very thoughtful and creative!! It was very beautiful and unique, loved it! It is actually designer if you think about it- designing and handmaking gift bags/wraps yourself. You can choose what you want on them and make them individual to suit the person's personality or likes!
I have acutally kept the decent peices of wrapping paper from my birthday to use for future. I hate to add more waste to the environment. xxx
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This year I got reusable grocery bags so that people could use those instead of getting regular bags when they go to the grocery store :)
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Place gifts in a reusable bag for the recipient, wrap them in a scarf, sweater, etc, that is also part of the gift. But the best is already listed, use old gift wrap, newspaper, magazines. I haven't bought gift wrap in years, I love to see give and receive gifts wrapped in creative ways.
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