Have you ever looked around at the detritus left from a busy Christmas morning of unwrapping presents? While mounds of colorful wrapping paper and ribbons can be fun to play with for cats and young children, all of that wasted paper is no good for the environment.
Sure, you can fold it up and re-use the paper next year but, with modern Christmas wrapping paper being so thin and sticky tape being so strong, there’s often not much salvageable paper left over.
But, what if we told you that there is such a thing as sustainable gift wrapping? That’s right, an eco-friendly way to wrap gifts! These sustainable gift wrapping ideas result in zero waste and, sometimes even add a little extra something for your recipient to use and treasure!
Gift Bags
Gift bags are a great way to be more eco friendly with your gift wrapping. You can find gift bags in all sorts of shapes and sizes so there’s almost nothing that cannot be ‘wrapped’ in a gift bag.
What’s more, gift bags come in all sorts of colors and designs so you can use them for any gift giving occasion, not just for sustainable Christmas gift wrapping.
When the gift giving is over, your recipient can keep their gift bags to use again the next time they need to give a gift.
Christmas Furoshiki
The Japanese method of wrapping gifts can be a great way to have a more environmentally friendly Christmas. All you need is some fabric large enough to wrap your gift in.
You can purchase pieces of cloth designed for this exact purpose, like this Furoshiki holiday wrapping cloth here. Or, you can think outside the box and use some other, easily accessible types of fabrics. Kitchen tea towels are a great option for this.
You can use a brightly or festively colored towel to wrap your gift and then finish it off with a ribbon. Or, you can buy some Christmas themed dish towels or hand towels and use these to wrap your gifts. Either way, your recipient gets to unwrap their gift and gets a nice new towel as an added bonus!
Reusable Shopping Bags
Your gift will still look pretty, your recipient will still get to ‘unwrap’ it, and they will have a new shopping bag to add to their collection! Everybody wins!
Zero Waste Wrapping Ideas
Kitchen towels, dish towels, hand towels, Christmas stockings, Christmas fabric, Christmas cushion covers and pillow cases – there are so many different things you could potentially use to wrap up your Christmas gifts in an environmentally friendly, sustainable way.
And, with each of these options, your lucky recipient is getting an added bonus gift that they can actually put to use in the method for which it was intended.
Or, they can copy your idea and reuse it the next time they need to wrap a gift! Either way, it will reduce the waste at your next Christmas party.
Here is a video we made showing you just how easy and fun it is to use eco friendly ways to wrap your Christmas gifts this year:
So, sustainable gift wrapping doesn’t have to be something that only hippies and greenies do. Everybody can get in on the act with these eco-friendly ways to wrap Christmas gifts.
And, nobody is missing out – the gifts are still wrapped, so everybody still gets the fun and excitement of unwrapping a gift.
