Thank you to Heather at October Daisy for this great holiday green tip.
Instead of throwing away all the holiday gift wrap most people accumulate from gift giving, save it! Run it through a paper shredder and use it to stuff gift bags or baskets. The finished result is beautiful!
And here are some more ideas:
Another use for use wrapping paper is when taking down your Christmas tree, use wrapping paper to wrap delicate ornaments, and to provide cushioning between ornaments wherever they are stored.
Also wrapping paper can be shredded and used to protect items you have to ship throughout the year.
Lastly, if you can’t find a use for the old wrapping paper, please recycle it, rather than throwing it in the trash. Check with your city to find out if wrapping paper is accepted in your recycling bin or if they have set up a special program for recycling it after the holidays (which is what my city does).
Have any green tips you’ve recently learned? Please email them to me and I may include your tip with a link to your site or blog in a future post. :)
Stumble it!
Heather says:
That’s a great tip! I’ll be doing that this year, and I thought even if you don’t make gift baskets and can’t use all of it in gift bags, you could use it for “packing peanuts” if you have to ship something fragile.
My tip: I am not going to buy anymore wrapping paper- I am going to start saving the Sunday Comics to wrap presents in. We get two sets of comics, so it shouldn’t take long to save up a lot of it to use year-round.
My second tip: save all the bows, twine, ribbons, etc that come off your gifts. You can reuse them throughout the year on other presents, and again on Christmas. Not to mention you end up saving a lot of money, not having to buy all these every year. If a bow or ribbon doesn’t stick anymore, just put a piece of tape on the glue part, and it works fine. My mother actually has done this for years- so in turn, we have been doing it for years. A nice practice to get your kids into. :-)
December 9th, 2007 at 6:39 pm
Ninotchka says:
Ooooh, love the shredding and using in giftbags idea. Thanks!
December 9th, 2007 at 7:56 pm
phyllis says:
the shredding idea is cool. here’s another idea: http://crafts.kaboose.com/recycle.html
or use the backside for fingerpainting or coloring.
one of our sunday school teachers showed the kids how to make envelopes using leftover wrapping paper – i can’t find a tutorial online but it seemed like a great idea!
December 9th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
Dawn says:
That is a great idea. I love it.
December 9th, 2007 at 10:47 pm
Amanda says:
great tips! I plan on saving our wrapping paper to let my little one finger paint on the back.
Instead of wrapping the gift’s we’re giving in wrapping paper, we’re using big sheets of brown paper we got from things we had shipped to us, having said little one paint all over them, and wrapping gifts with those. They will probably still get thrown out, but at least it kept us from having to make more waste by buying paper.
December 10th, 2007 at 7:39 am
Everday Yogini says:
I love these ideas!! I am definitely going to be using these…
December 10th, 2007 at 7:51 am
A.M.S. says:
Just a warning…check with your local trash collectors. Here, we aren’t allowed to put most wrapping paper in the recycling bin. Something about the waxy coating that’s used to make it slick and shiny. Since we don’t have to sort our recyclables, if there’s wrapping paper in the bin, they refuse the collect the entire bin.
December 10th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Carmi says:
I’ve dropped this entry onto my BlackBerry for her to read when she gets up tomorrow. Thank you for sharing these excellent ideas: we have more wrapping paper than we can handle!
Hope you have a wonderful WW. I’ve posted my contribution here and hope you drop by for a look around:
http://writteninc.blogspot.com/2007/12/wordless-wednesday-push-envelope.html
All the best…
Carmi
December 11th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Stephenie F says:
So helpful–I plan on doing them all!
December 13th, 2007 at 11:21 pm