Charlie Brown worried about the shallow consumerism of the holidays, but he never mentioned one of the most egregious side effects of that consumerism: massive holiday waste. Massive easily preventable holiday waste.
According to Stanford University:
“Americans throw away 25% more trash during the Thanksgiving to New Year’s holiday period than any other time of year. The extra waste amounts to 25 million tons of garbage, or about 1 million extra tons per week!
If every family reused just two feet of holiday ribbon, the 38,000 miles of ribbon saved could tie a bow around the entire planet. If every American family wrapped just 3 presents in re-used materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields. The 2.65 billion Christmas cards sold each year in the U.S. could fill a football field 10 stories high. If we each sent one card less, we’d save 50,000 cubic yards of paper.”
The pointlessness of such waste is nearly incomprehensible. There are so many wonderful, creative, and beautiful alternatives to wrapping paper and holiday cards, and so many ways to recycle, reuse, and repurpose those that are already in production. Save some trees (not to mention reducing some of the other pollution caused by the production and dying of mass produced holiday paper products), and save some money with these beautiful, fun, and more sustainable holiday card and gift wrap alternatives:
GIVING:
Green Holiday Card Alternatives
1. Make your own from recycled materials – There are tons of tutorials out there on using newspaper and other forms of waste paper as gift wrap (see below), but precious few on how to use waste paper to make gift cards, which surprises me. Look for a tutorial on just that right here on Urban Earthworm very, very soon.
On of my all-time very favorite ways to make my own cards/paper/greetings, is by making home-made seed paper. This is way easier than it sounds, recycled waste paper, and results in a greeting that can be planted instead of thrown away! There are many ways to make seed paper, most just involving paper, water, a blender, seeds (the seeds do NOT go in the blender), and a drying method. Check here for one example. Once you’ve made your seed paper, use it to write a nice holiday note, print a holiday newsletter on it, or make it into a card by attaching a holiday image cut from an old magazine to it. Voila! My hands-down favorite idea.
2. Purchase cards made of recycled materials – in very much the same vein as discussed in the Gift Giving Guide, if you decide you want to purchase cards to send, there are easy ways to ensure the cards you buy have the smallest negative footprint and the money you spend goes somewhere worthwhile.
Look for cards made from 100% recycled materials – 100% post-consumer recycled is best.
Look for cards whose proceeds benefit a charity. Last year, we gave cards that benefitted Amnesty International and were printed on recycled paper. (This year my goal is to make the cards).
If you like the custom printed cards like those with family pictures on them, keep in mind that there are many companies out there from which you can get such cards printed on recycled paper with vegetable based ink, such as Greenfield Paper, BuyGreen, GreenerPrinter, Conserveatree, and My Good Greetings. That’s just a beginning list of the possibilities. I haven’t done a lot of research on these, and I can’t endorse any one in particular, but they are all better than just ordering from environmentally irresponsible card printing companies. Some of those listed even have seed paper cards!
3. Go Paperless! – I admit that I love getting cards in the mail, even if I do worry about the waste. Getting mail is fun and personal, which is why many people (including me) shy away from digital holiday greetings, but there are actually a number of ways to send holiday cards online that ARE personal, fun, and unique in addition to being the best choice for sustainability.
Want to send a family newsletter or photo card? Make one exactly as you would for mass mailing, but email it instead, and attach a personal message to each individual email.
Use your card addressing time to write personal messages to people you would otherwise send impersonal cards to.
Go through the 1,000’s of digital photos we all hoard on our computers these days, and send pictures targeted at the recipients (for instance when you send your holiday greeting to your cousin, include pictures of her at your wedding or from your summer visit to her house). If you know anyone who has suffered a loss, find pictures of their lost loved one that they may not have.
A popular new trend involves making YouTube or other internet video holiday greetings – there is a LOT of fun potential with that.
This year, I will probably only send paper invitations to a few people, mostly those who don’t use the computer regularly.
Please send me your creative digital card ideas (or any ideas that would fit in this post) and I’ll include them in the list!
Green Wrapping Paper Alternatives
This sections possibly could have been it’s own post. There are thousands of ideas out there for alternatives to wrapping paper. I’ve been on board with it for a while, though not with much skill. I wrapped most of Flintstone’s birthday presents in sheets and pillowcases, but I can’t say it was pretty. The ideas below, though, they are very pretty, mostly easy (because that’s how I roll), and would make excellent family crafts – a great way to teach the kids about sustainability and not wasting! And, inspired by the absolute plethora of ideas out there for not only wrapping paper alternatives, but also for reusing wrapping paper, cards, etc., I’ve started a Pinterest board specifically to link to the ideas I couldn’t fit in this post, but which seemed like great ideas. Check it out.
1. Old Paper – the classic and beloved method of wrapping gifts in old paper is getting new life. First, I think black and white newsprint with a red bow is just beautiful. Second, there is so much more potential and creativity that goes into this kind of wrapping these days, the possibilities are nearly endless. This bodes well for me, because I have a MOUNTAIN of old magazines just waiting to find some second purpose. Here are some ideas:
http://howaboutorange.blogspot.com/2009/10/make-gift-bow-from-magazine-page.html
And it doesn’t stop at wrapping:
Most of these ideas feature old newspaper and magazines, but just look around you, there is waste paper everywhere just waiting to be re-purposed. My huge desk calendar is destined to be covered in my children’s art (on the blank backs), and used as giftwrap. Old calendars and phone books. Out of date maps make particularly adorable wrapping. You can even customize it. Old dictionary pages for the grammar nerd. Comics for your resident class clown. Discarded architecture plans for the engineer in your life. The potential for creativity is wide open! Even old plastic bags (from the days before you got your environmentally friendly canvas bags) have potential:
2. Wrap it in something useful – I wrapped MacGyver’s birthday present last year in a new tee-shirt for him. There are tutorials out there specifically on how to fold shirts as giftwrap. You can also use scarves, pashminas, fabric scraps (if you or your recipient sew), towels – any fabric really. Use re-usable bags instead of disposable gift bags. The gift bags you buy in the card section are sometimes 4 or 5 dollars a piece when the reusable shopping bags up front with the cute designs are only 99 cents, and are REUSABLE. Seems a little obvious. And even if the paper gift bags are cheaper, they haven’t got a single advantage over re-usable bags – paper bags rip, pollute, and even though they can be reused, they crumple. There are so many absolutely adorable re-usable bags out there that can easily double as gift bags, I honestly see no reason to ever buy a “disposable” gift bag. Check out these reusable gift bags made of recycled materials:
Made from recycled Billboards – The Animal Rescue Site store has an amazing variety of different sizes and styles of bags made from different recycled materials.
3. Don’t Wrap It; Hide It – Finding baskets on Ostara or Easter is a blast, why not have that fun more often? And who wouldn’t love opening up their sock drawer and finding a new watch?
4. Give Experience. Like This. – Sometimes the best gifts don’t need to be wrapped at all. Click the link for ideas of gifts of experience.
Tune in Soon for the next installment: What to do with all the wrapping paper and holiday cards you receive this year.
* Every image on this post, while public domain, was linked to a tutorial and the creator of the image, but for some reason many of those links got wiped out. If you own any of the images, please let me know so I can give you credit!
Reading your article brought home some key points
for me which has inspired me. Thank you for creating a great
site with some useful information.
Wow, I had no idea about those stats. I will change what I do even more because you’ve told me something I needed to hear. Thank you!
I love gifts wrapped in news print or other re-purposed materials. You’re right that there are so many beautiful alternatives to expensive and non-recyclable wrapping paper.
I like to make the wrapping part of the gift – like wrapping something in a scarf or a beautiful towel or such. It’s a bit more expensive, but I guess if you were good enough at knitting, for example…
I also used to wrap gifts in old magazines, but my family complained and was upset to a point I could not stand. So I try to use re-useable gift bags, scarves or maybe recycle old giftwrapping paper (if we kept it safe from the cats).
By the way, I love the idea of seed cards. Have got to try that!