Did you know that every year, Canadians send approx. 540,000 tonnes of wrapping paper and bags to the landfill? That’s equivalent to 100,000 elephants.
In Manitoba, the following holiday wrapping items can’t go in your blue bin:
- Wrapping paper
- Bows and ribbon
- Holiday gift bags
- Tissue paper
- Plastic shopping bags
This holiday season, reduce waste by using what you already have in your home to wrap your [hopefully already sustainable] gifts. If you don’t have anything to wrap your gift with, consider purchasing a reusable gift bag you can use for years to come (such as these from Reclaim Mending). If you’re adding a ribbon to your gift, be sure it’s made from material you can reuse for future gifts.
Here are some examples:
Scarf
Use a scarf. You can either take the scarf back at the end of the night, or give it to the recipient as part of their gift.
Tea Towel or Scrap Material
Use a towel or scrap material you have lying around the house. Be sure the material gets reused again after (by you or the recipient).
Reusable Bag
Either use a bag you already have, or purchase a holiday theme reusable bag to use for years to come (see Reclaim Mending).
Newspaper/Flyer
Collect old newspapers or flyers to wrap your gifts with. Be sure to use minimal tape (and remove the tape before recycling the paper). Colorful comics make especially fun wrapping.
Map
Have an old map kicking around your house that you don’t use anymore? These make great wrapping paper.
Calendar
For smaller gifts, use the paper from last year’s calendar!
Great ideas! But I would suggest providing the equivalent of 540,000 tonnes in a species that we find in Manitoba – or at least Canada – eg. a polar bear. Which is what I do in my compost presentations. That keeps it local.
Can white tissue paper be recycled?
Hi Karen!
Great question. Tissue paper, the kind that we usually use in wrapping presents, is not accepted for recycling by the City of Winnipeg. It is paper and thus theoretically recyclable, but the length of fibres and the likelihood of it being heavily coloured and contaminated by glitter etc means the city does not accept it (they can’t sort to the degree required to distinguish between accepted and non-accepted wrapping materials so they basically just pull it all out of the line…but some gets through and contaminates unfortunately). I reuse old tissue paper that I’ve ended up with from others, but don’t buy any myself, because of this.
Colour comics are my favourite for wrapping!!
We saved allllll of the tissue paper from our wedding shower and folded it and stuck it in a box in rainbow order. So we’re still using tissue paper, but it’s all reused…and will be for YEARS. In hindsight, I wish we’d asked for unwrapped gifts or sustainably wrapped ones, but in showers it can be hard to ask for that.