Greening my House

And the Wrap Artist of the Year goes to…

Let’s say I do have a gift that needs wrapping, so I need wrapping paper, right?

Well, hold on a second.

A lot of wrapping paper is printed on glossy paper that has been bleached first. The chlorine in the bleach is really bad for the environment. (See the post below about laundry for more on how chlorine is bad when it gets into the fresh water system.) The stuff that makes it glossy is often resins or even worse PVC, which is a type of plastic. That makes it difficult to recycle. The ink itself may be made from petroleum, which of course causes more CO2 emissions and therefore global warming. Finally, the paper itself could have been made from old growth forests and therefore unsustainable. All this for a product that is decoration that is ripped off and just thrown away.

In the US, roughly 4 million tons of wrapping paper and shopping bags are thrown out every holiday season instead of being recycled or reused.

Woah.

Green Wrapping

There is a better way.

• You can use unbleached paper to avoid the chlorine problems.
• You can use flat paper instead of glossy to avoid the coatings.
• You can find paper printed with soy-based inks that are compostable and recyclable.
• Some paper is even made from sustainably farmed wood.

Of course, these are hard to find at just any store, but there are some that do actually “get it”. There are of course, the eco-stores online such as SweetOrganicsAndNaturals.com, EarthLoven.com, FishLipsPaperDesigns.com, or SuperiorGiftWrap.com, amongst many others, that sell recycled and eco-friendly paper.

The big stores are starting to “get it” too. Hallmark for example prints most of its gift wrap on paper stock from sustainable forests, and their Product(RED) papers are made with all recycled fibers.

Just do a search on Yahoo or Google for eco-friendly wrapping paper. The whole goal here if you are going to wrap something is to use a paper that can be easily composted or recycled.

The Un-Wrap

An even better solution to buying new paper is to wrap with something you might already have around your home.

• Grocery store bags are made of unbleached paper and make good wrapping. Just turn them inside-out to get the plain brown wrapping on the outside of the present. If you have kids, they can liven up the paper by drawing a Christmas scene on it, which makes it a lot more personal and very cute.
• The comics section of the newspaper is fun for kids, and 95% of newspapers today are printed with soy-based inks and have at least some recycled paper content, so the paper is compostable.
• Old magazines are pretty colourful, and some of the women’s magazines even smell sorta nice.
• Old fabric such as tee-shirts that you were going to throw away anyways makes for a luxurious and unique wrapping.
• In Japan and Korea, it is very common to wrap presents with special fabrics that can be saved and reused. In Japan: furoshiki, in Korea: Bojagi. Just don’t give the same cloth back to the person who originally gave it to you!
• Reuse a box that you got from someone else or from a shipment.
• Keep those little bags that you get from other people for presents, like the ones that wine bottles come in, or the wide gift bags for presents. Often, you can regift them to someone else many times before they are so worn out that they need to be recycled.
• Used paper from your printer. Misprints and other such wastes can be put to good use covering small boxes. But, be careful — make sure you don’t do what I did and use your phone bill that your wife left on the printer. Protect your identity.
• Cellophane. I’m talking about the real thing, not regular plastic wrap that people call cellophane. Real cellophane is made from the cellulose of plants and is fully biodegradable, though some of the chemical used in its manufacture are a little nasty. Sometimes, it even comes in nice tints, and makes great festive-looking wrapping for food gifts.
• Some very careful and meticulous people (ie. not me) unwrap presents preserving the paper intact. They can then reuse the paper for their own gifts. This takes a lot of work, but can save the eco-unfriendly paper from an untimely demise. Obviously this idea is not going to work so well if the recipient is a kid.
• The paperwork from your mortgage, or the paper from your stock certificates makes for a nice colourful wrapping. They’re worthless in this economy anyways. Haha, okay, just kidding. (Mostly — grrrr!!)

Even better is to not wrap the present at all. My wife and I don’t wrap our presents to each other at all. We just bring them out and give them. Mostly that is because we are too lazy to wrap, but we can justify it to ourselves as “being green.” Maybe that will change when our newborn twins get a little older and want presents under the tree.

Decorations

Bows and cards can be made from paper or natural material ribbons. Tying a bow is actually pretty easy, even for a non-artistic engineer like me. Just keep it simple and use a shoelace knot. Avoid the plastic ribbon you find at the craft stores. Plastic = oil = green house gasses = global warming.

Get out the crayons and let the kids doodle on plain paper before you wrap presents. This will make for a great personalized wrapping, especially for favourite uncles or aunts.

Keeping it Together

As for holding the package together, there are a few choices:

• Most clear tapes today use regular plastic, but if you can find real cellophane tape, you can use that, especially if it has natural glue.
• You can find paper-based packing tape that goes well with your reused grocery bag wrapping because they’re both brown. Although, you should try to avoid the paper tape with fibreglass reinforcement in it that you get at moving stores. They are strong for moving boxes, but not compostable.
• Another type of paper tape is joint tape used to tape up the seams between two pieces of drywall. You can find that at any home or hardware store.
• Paper ribbons make a pretty wrapping around boxes which don’t need structural support.
• Tie it up with natural manila, sisal, cotton, or wool string. Any of these natural fibres should be able to biodegrade over time in a compost heap. Avoid plastic twine.

Delicates

When you need to protect delicate presents, avoid the styrofoam or plastic packing peanuts. You know, global warming again.

Use regular paper, tissue, old magazines, newspapers, or your printer misprints all scrunched up as packing materials.

There are a few companies that sell packing peanuts made of corn starch that can also biodegrade in a compost heap easily. They even dissolve quickly in water, so if you don’t have a compost heap, you can just flush them down your drain or toilet. Or, if you are making a nice sauce, you can drop a few of them in there to thicken it. Okay, just kidding. I wouldn’t put them in the food after an unknown number of people handled them. Ew.

Shipping

For those friends and family members that do not live close to you and whom you are not going to visit, obviously you need to ship them their presents. Try to buy their presents and ship by ground freight instead of air. Shipping by ground uses far less fuel than shipping by air, and therefore less carbon emissions. They key here is to shop early enough to allow time for the ground freight to get there before the holidays.

Another idea is to shop locally over the Internet. That way, shipping is minimized because the gifts are shipped from a location from near the recipient.

Happy Holidays!