sustainable christmas: gift wrapping and holiday cards ideas
in christmas
Together with holiday decorating, gifts are one of the first things that get tackled when Christmas approaches. We’ve already looked at some inspiration to decorate more sustainably this holiday season, so now it’s time to turn to sustainable Christmas gift wrapping!
sustainable gift wrapping paper & co
One of the most sustainable options to wrap gifts is regular brown paper. But, according to personal tastes, brow paper alone can look too rustic, not festive enough and just boring. Guess what though? It doesn’t have to be that way! With a bit of creativity, plain brown paper can become fully Christmas-appropriate and give our gifts an extra touch of personalization (who doesn’t like that?). And all of this while being less harmful to the environment, as brown paper is fully recyclable!
Then how to decorate regular paper to make it festive and appropriate for sustainable Christmas gift wrapping? The sky is the limit here, with just one rule. Embellishments should not defeat the overall purpose of wrapping gifts sustainably, and should be sustainable too!
So here are some sustainable materials that can be used to decorate brown paper:
- Paper cut-outs and origami
- Ornaments (wood, fabric, cork…)
- Fabric ribbons
- Greenery
- Drawing and lettering
- Postcards
- Christmas cards (see next paragraph)
Even though brown paper is the most common, plain regular paper exists in other colours as well. The overall idea is choosing simple paper (that will therefore be recyclable) and make it special with – equally sustainable – decorations!
Alternatively you can choose to move away from paper and wrap your gifts differently, using boxes, jars or other containers!
sustainable christmas cards + tags
Do you still use Christmas cards? In some areas of the world, it’s still common to send over physical cards at Christmas, whereas elsewhere they’re more of a thoughtful addition to presents, just as gift tags.
Either way, the Internet is packed full of ideas to create fun and festive cards and tags using simple materials, which qualifies the end results as sustainable Christmas cards (even though I bet nobody would ever want to throw one of these cards away!)
So what do you think? Isn’t it funny to wrap gifts sustainably? Personally, I love the handmade touch, which makes gifts thoughtful and personal already from the unwrapping!
