Waste Prevention in Gift Wrapping
10 Simple Ideas

Breaking the "gift-wrap" habit isn't easy, so here are a few ideas to get you started.

1. Design your own gift-wrap by using a paper grocery or department store bag and adding decorations such as drawings, stamped patterns, or pictures cut from magazines. Let the kids do the designing. It will keep them busy on stormy days.

2. Spruce up brown paper wrapping with pretty bows, which can be saved and used for many years.

3. Purchase sturdier gift bags (or save the ones that you receive) that can be used again for another present.

4. For large, hard to wrap gifts, just add a large fancy bow.

5. Or hide the large, unwieldy gift somewhere in the house or yard, and give the person a card with a clue, or a series of clue cards, to lead them to the present.

6. Save those gift boxes and use them again. Many gift boxes fold down and take little room to store in a closet or cabinet.

7. Start a tradition of Christmas stockings for each person. Little gifts can be put in the stocking without being wrapped. The stockings can be used year after year.

8. Some gifts come in decorated gift boxes. Just add a bow and a gift tag, and the present is ready to be displayed.

9. Wrap gifts in the funny pages or old posters.

10. If you do use storebought wrapping paper, buy the kind with recycled content (the more postconsumer, the better).

Holiday Home Page