An Eco Friendly Guide to Gift Wrapping This Winter

I am such a Christmas baby – the festive season brings me so much happiness. The winter months have always been full of gift giving and receiving for me – I know many people with birthdays in the colder months and mine is only 6 days before Christmas Day.

Whilst I love giving and receiving gifts with gorgeous wrapping paper, it did start to make me think how much of it was recyclable and how much was going to landfill. After some research, I found that in the UK alone, we throw away the equivalent of 108 million rolls of wrapping paper at Christmas time. (source: The Independent)

I found this statistic very shocking (but also totally believable) so I’m sharing some eco friendly alternatives for guilt-free, but just as beautiful wrapping in 2019.

Newspapers and Magazines

These can look so effective! I have seen others use newspapers in different languages for gift wrap which is super quirky. You can also use magazines and theme them on a specific person – perhaps sheets of a favourite celebrity or use Donald Trump’s face for a novelty gift.

Fabrics

This isn’t actually as weird as it’s sounds, as first I wasn’t sure about this idea but after a good Pinterest session I was well on board with it! (not that we can ever do it like it’s shown on Pinterest)

Last Christmas I received a gift in a fabric bag and I actually loved how different it was, and it happens to be one of the gifts I found most memorable, just for the reason of how it was wrapped. These are becoming a lot more mainstream nowadays and are so much more eco friendly as they can be used again and again.

Furoshiki is also becoming more mainstream in the UK recently – this is a Japanese piece of fabric that can be tied up and used to wrap a gift. You can find furoshiki in many different patterns and they look so pretty when complete! These can be an extra little gift for the recipient to keep, or can be reused to wrap other gifts.

Biodegradable paper

After a bit of research I have found that there a fair few ways to go about this whilst keeping it impressive to look at. The first is using brown paper. This may seem underwhelming at a glance, but there are so many things you can do with this as you essentially have a blank canvas! Some ideas you could use are…

• using stamps with different colour ink
• adding alternatives to ribbons such as cinnamon or tree branches
• add yarn or twine
• personalise with stickers
• get some paint and use your children’s hand prints
• add layers with fabric or embellishments

There are also some companies that specialise in recyclable wrapping paper if you’re not feeling as crafty. One that stood out to me was Re-wrapped – they have a big range and their cards/paper are made from 100% recyclable materials. 5% of their profits go to charity which is also great to know!

Maps

This is one of my favourite ideas. Not many people are still using concrete maps anymore (shout out to my bestie Google Maps) and you’re bound to have some old ones lying around somewhere. Why not have a travel theme and recycle them to give your recipient a gift to remember?!

Boxes

This is another way you can get really creative. I always have boxes lying around my house with no use and it looks like you’ve put so much more effort in to decorate the gift by up-cycling and personalising the packaging.

Here are some of my favourites…

Thank you for reading this #Blogtober post on how to wrap your gifts in a more eco friendly way this year. I hope you found some new ideas!