Holiday gift wrap is eco-friendly
This kind of wrapping avoids the landfill.
CANTON (AP) — Gifts from Santa this season may not come in the usual wrapping paper, ribbons and gift packaging as more shoppers look for ways to avoid sending even more waste to landfills.
“Don’t have the waste to begin with,” said Linda Morckel, the recycling coordinator for the Stark-Tuscarawas-Wayne Joint Solid Waste Management District who sees first hand the waste pile up the week after Christmas. “It’s just going to make your landfills fill up quicker. It’s going to be buried. It’s going to take decades for it to decompose.”
Inspired by the daily flow of trash to the American Landfill and the Countywide Recycling & Disposal Facility near her home in Waynesburg, Sandy Ionno found alternative methods of gift wrapping.
About five years ago she began using gift bags, old tissue paper, kitchen towels, beach towels and baby blankets for her presents, and then added newspaper comics pages and, for larger toys, plastic garbage bags. Instead of shiny ribbons, she ties the package with reusable yarn.
“I tend to be kind of green,” she said.
Others say reusable wrappings are kind to more than just the environment. “They work great for me, because I’m so incredibly cheap,” said Cynthia Vignos of Canton. She said she’s used and reused gift bags for more than five years, giving a present in a bag to a family member one Christmas and then receiving a gift in the same bag a year later.
“Sometimes it’s fun to see how long you can keep the same gift bag going before it disintegrates,” Vignos said.
Mary Jo Ebner, of Jackson Township, said she’s sewed between 50 and 75 homemade gift bags out of holiday fabric, cutting down on excess waste and the mess of wrapping paper in the house Christmas morning.
“I hate to buy wrapping paper,” she said. “It’s expensive. You have to throw it out.”
There are plenty of things around the house that can be repurposed as wrapping paper, said Bob Lilienfeld, who runs a Web site called use-less-stuff.com. He suggests wrapping gifts in brown paper grocery bags, old maps and the Sunday comics. Magazine or newspaper advertisements related to the gift can be used as wrapping paper, giving a subtle hint to the recipient, he said.
He also recommends people give gifts that don’t need wrapping such as game or concert tickets or gift cards to a favorite restaurant or store.
Besides, for most on Christmas morning, the wrapping paper is an impediment to be removed as quickly as possible, Lilienfeld said.