This holiday season alter your wrapping style from wasteful to thoughtful and hand crafted. Why? Because gift wrapping has an extremely short lifespan and ends up in the garbage seconds after being torn apart. It is a complete waste.

Instead of being tempted by the sparkly, shiny papers and bows at your local box store choose instead to upcycle things already at hand in your house. Use items that are on their way to the recycling center such as newspaper, brown bags from the grocery store, or other paper products like calendars, maps, & magazines and catalogs.

In order to be more sustainable you must think and plan ahead. The same way that you have to remember to bring your resuable bags from the car into the store and to take your tumbler with you in the car before you stop for a coffee, you’ll have to plan to hold onto newspaper and other things to be used for wrapping. This takes foresight, but you likewise buy and keep store bought wrapping paper and bows, so it should be an easy shift to begin storing newspapers and brown bags for wrapping in the same location and stock up for upcoming birthdays and holidays. It’s not that common these days to receive a newspaper since most people consume their news from online sources, so you may have to acquire newspaper from your place of work or from a relative who still gets a daily paper. Junk mail and advertisements that come are another source, for me it is the local penny savers that I keep to use because they are abundant where I live. We must have 3-4 placed in our mailbox weekly.

To jazz up your gift wrap have a search on pinterest for upcycled wrapping ideas, there are many. You can paint the wrap or stamp it with a homemade potato stamp which could make for a great winter craft night in. Here is a detailed blog on how-to make potato stamps. You can also make bows out of newspaper. There are a lot of different styles and techniques to make different types of newspaper bows. A quick google search brings up half a dozen styles that you can create so that your gifts under the tree are unique and look as snazzy as purchased bows made in China. Here is a good blog tutorial to make bows out of newspaper or, a neat idea for those with little ones in the house, to make the bows out of children’s scribbles.

Creating bows will take time, but as I find with most things that I do with my hands to create something, is in the end satisfying and meditative. You’ll need simple household items such as scissors, glue, and tape. Making a patter first for your bows may quicken up the process.

Other embellishments can be added like twine or other festive string, using twine and other string as ribbon is not necessarily waste free, unless you hold on to previously used string and give it a second life as gift wrap, so I cannot say completely that the gifts that I wrapped are absolutely zero waste, but they are more ethical than plastic based ribbon sold at stores. A more eco idea is to use sprigs of pine tree snipped from the back of your Christmas tree or from outside. If you’re wrapping during another season, for a summer birthday perhaps, then you can use other seasonal plants. Check first to be sure that the plant is not harmful – don’t give your friend a gift with decorative poison ivy on it, for example. This blog has a lot of different ideas including using bits of plants and more.

Crafting your own gift wrap is not hard, it just takes time, so put the kettle on, sit in front of the heater and get creative. The best part about upcycled and DIY gift wrap is that on top of being unique and personalized, it utilizes materials that are easily recyclable as opposed to store bought wrapping paper, which often IS NOT RECYCLABLE and sadly ends up in the landfill.