is there a more environmentally friendly alternative to wrapping paper??

[nappyaddict]

every year i buy rolls and rolls and rolls of the stuff which is then ripped off in about 7 seconds and thrown across the living room floor. it seems such a waste that all those trees are being chopped down for the sake of 7 seconds!!

Pictures that the kids have done? I try and save a pile to wrap some presents.

Alternatively, get them to do a Christmas painting or drawing activity, then reuse as gift wrap.

oooh that's a good idea for when ds is older. not for his own presents though cos he would know FC hadn't wrapped them then.

That's a great idea! I am going to do that this year!

any other ideaS?

Send a charity goat.

I save drawings the children have done and can sometimes wrap items in those (especially if A3 size or bigger).

I put all the wrapping paper in the recycling bin afterwards (except for that horrible foily stuff, which I wouldn't buy but some people do). Also sometimes buy recycled paper in the first place

Hiding them with clues where to find them - makes the present opening last longer too (don't do it with all of them though as could never think of enough clues)

Brown parcelling paper with handmade paper tags and tied with natural raffia looks nice. Totally recyclable too.

Re-use the wrapping paper. It's amazing how long it can last if you encourage the kids to be careful when opening gifts. I also re-use the tissue paper that comes in shoe boxes etc. for wapping gifts with. You can use newspaper or old magazines according to DH but I think that's a little extreme personally. I love the goat idea hunkermunker. I wish someone would send me one for Christmas.

God, i resent wrapping paper. But I love opening presents!

I re-use anything we get and also use newspapers and magazines for dh and people i know. Choose an appropriate page and it's fine (eg a funky comic page for a kid or an arty landscape picture). You can dress it up (and just normal paper too) with bows and that if you have them. Always looks nice when finished. If I have to buy some, I buy the non-metallic, non-laminated normal paper kind. Or you can wrap presents in a nice scarf or something.

Vowed with dh that FC will always use magazines and newspapers... Although might have to be more careful as she gets older as kids notice these things, apparently when I was little I commented how funny it was that FC used the same wrapping paper as Mummy and Daddy...

we aren't allowed to put wrapping paper in our recycling.

some people say they use foil but i don't know how it doesn't rip!!

i always reuse gift bags and gift boxes though and you know those paper bags you sometimes get from shops i always cut out something from a xmas card to cover the logo and use those. and i wrap shoes boxes in white paper and decorate them so they can be used year after year.

tbh i prefer using boxes and bags - i hate wrapping!!

goosey loosey do you mean you hide them unwrapped?

how do you manage to reuse wrapping paper. doesn't it look rubbish when you take the selotape off cos it leaves that white mark.

reuse old wrapping paper and recycle childrens pics.

oh what i do do though is put the wrapping paper in the shredder and then next year fill the bags and boxes up with it so you can't see what you've got as soon as you pen the box/bag iyswim.

I use a lot of carrier bags in the same way as you do, Nappyaddict.

I think newspaper is fine if you do it in an 'arty' way, and you could get the kids to do red and green tree potato prints all over it, or something.

afaik, wrapping paper (especially the cheap stuff on rolls) is not good for recycling because of the amount of glue in it. Also for it to be worth re-cycling you have to remove all the sellotape.

I was really sickened when I looked at the mountain of wrapping and packaging tha\t Christmas in our house resulted in last year. So much shiny laminated card packaging is very contaminating to re-cycling, too.

Tie the parcels up with ribbon rather than ues sellotape. We save wrapping paper to reuse whenever possible, as does my mum who has kept some pieces going for years. Only thing is some peope are sniffy about getting "their" paper from last year on this years present.

I re-use it by either using re-wrapping it the same way with fresh sellotape, cutting it up into smaller pieces and getting rid of the marked pieces, or re-using ribbons to cover up marked bits.

natural collection do recycled wrapping paper, and rafia/ribbons for tying etc I think.

After last christmas, I toyed briefly with idea of sewing various sizes of 'sack' out of festive coloured fabric for re-use year after year...needless to say I have not moved from thinkiong to doing!

dumb question but is normal string recylable?

the amount of money spent on wrapping is alarming considering it all goes in the bin

my mil buys the stiffest poshest stuff

agree that children's paintings good idea (depending on their talent, my kids' pictures all seem to look like cowpats)

Suspect normal string is compostable if not recyclable.

At ILs house all torn, scrunched wrapping paper goes on the fire...

Nappyaddict - I do hide many unwrapped the night before and then leave clues to follow to find them. The dcs' advent calendar also takes the form of clues as to where I have hidden a chocolate or something similar - they love it.

will save that idea for when ds is older. i used to love easter eggs hunts!

banana leaves

straw

We either re-use wrapping paper or use newspaper. Both work brilliantly! My sister recieved a pressie which had an old label from granny who had died 5 or 6 years earlier - it was actually very funny. Also with newspaper - if you want to go posh, use the FT for it's becoming pink hue. Otherwise you can use any old page or approrpaute pages as you see fit. Oh - never buy a newspaper purposely - the free ones that get shoved through your letter box first before moving on to the next tier.....