Who Knew You Can Wrap Holiday Gifts in Creative - and Environmentally Friendly - ways?

With the holidays approaching, it’s the season when we think about gifts for our families and friends. Of course, gifts usually involve lots of shiny, colorful paper. Gift wrap is often covered in a glossy coating. Sometimes there’s glitter or foil on it too. Hardly any of it gets used again. Instead, most of it ends up in the trash. If it has any coating on it at all, it’s not recyclable.

What to do? You can try newspaper. To avoid rips, use 3 sheets - pages with small print work best. Plain tissue paper like the kind you crinkle up to fill a box around the corners can work, too (as long as it has no glitter or shine to it). Again, use 2 or 3 sheets. Or you can use a single sheet of brown packaging paper - the ordinary paper people use to wrap packages for the USPS. Accent your presents with colorful yarn or string instead of plastic ribbon. Or better yet, use colored pencils to draw designs.

You can also try some colorful fabric, which can be folded around gifts and reused over and over again. You can buy fabric gift bags that will last a long time and endure multiple uses too. If you have a sewing machine you can create your own fabric gift bags.

Or consider a gift that involves “doing” rather than “having:” a lift tickett o a ski area, a meal at a favorite restaurant, or a movie night out. Such gifts bring holiday joy and they don’t require any wrapping at all!