How do you wrap your presents? Am appalled at the amount of wrapping paper I hve just taken to be recycled.

[fishnet]

Thinking of buying some cheap christmas fabric (saw some for 75p a metre), cutting into sections and wrapping with christmas string. We can then use over and over again within the family. Or even better might get some plain cotton and get the DSs to use fabric paint to customise.

Anyone have any other suggestions?

I just reuse wrapping paper, use minimal amount of sellotape.

we use plain brown parcel paper and get the kids to use stamps to decorate.
not reusable but cheaper than real wrapping paper.
i heard that wrapping paper shouldn't be recycled, don't know why though.

I like the cloth bags idea

We do reuse the old paper but DS2 (18months) is a bit of a grab and ripper at the moment!

my ds turns his art work in to wrapping paper, it is rreusuing it and it is also very unique. He is 6 and loves drawing pictures, he often draws so many we can't keep them all so we wrap presents in them.

Or for something a bit different, what about japanese fabric wrapping?

For children's birthday presents we use "The Comic" (Guardian Kids pages), or pages from comics.

newspaper with nice ribbons - the FT looks especially lovely!

i used to work somewhere where we got the guardian everyday. The centre page always has a double page picture, so one year for a few weeks before christmas i saved up some of them (avoiding ones of disasters showing dead bodies etc!) and used them as wrapping paper. I was surprised how good they looked (imo anyway!).

I think wrapping paper can be recycled but not if it is the shiny stuff - which seems like even more of a waste of resources (and money) if you ask me.

Also agree with others about reusing gift bags.

I think that wrapping paper can't always be recycled as the shiny stuff isn't suitable as Innat says, also if there is loads of sellotape on it.

I have a few large gift bags and bottle bags and keep swapping them back and forwards with my mum, dh, close friends etc.

dd made some little sweets etc and we just put those in tins we had saved through the year. (nice tins, not empty bean tins ) I gave two of these to a friend who will use the tins as pretty storage tins.

I saved loads of Christmas wrapping this year and used it to make a big pass the parcel for dd1's birthday in January. I felt very virtuous.

another one here for plain brown paper and ribbon (no sellotape). i'm not sure what happens to all the xmas paper with sellotape on it - does it all get landfilled?

ds1 is into stickers at the moment and so put some santa ones on at xmas time - no better than sellotape though i suppose!

i like the newspaper and comic ideas and the pass the parcel!

I've got some recycled and recyclable wrapping paper which I bought from the WWF catalogue a couple of years ago (it's a huge roll)

Also gift bags if you know the recipient will reuse.

luvaduck - we do that! Have done for years. The FT with salmon-pink ribbon looks lovely. The receiver can recycle/compost/make logs out of the newspaper and reuse the ribbon (if they're so inclined). Brown parcel wrap (optionally decorated by the kids) with raffia is nice. And plain tissue paper - both recyclable and compostable. Lining paper jazzed up with nice, reusable ribbons? And our latest habit is brown takeaway-style bags. You can buy them in bulk online, very cheaply. They're quicker than wrapping at Christmas - we put lots of handmade bits in them, which would be a faff to wrap individually - and easy to jazz up. Recyclable/compostable too.

Someone asked why conventional wrapping paper can't be recycled - correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't because of the plastic coatings which make it glossy/the foil content which makes it sparkly? It makes most (but not all) conventional wrapping papers a composite material (like Tetra Paks/juice cartons), and renders them unrecyclable. Steer clear if you can - and reuse the wrapping paper given to you.

Japanese wrapping cloths

• the giver gets the cloth back traditionally

Use real ribbons so they can be re-used

I reuse my piles of pictures produced by ds1 and ds2. Or for larger presents, I do the brown paper plus decoration approach. Dp buys shiny rolls of wrapping paper with superheroes on.

I am fascinated by the Japanese 'Furoshiki', particularly because when I visited Tokyo (about 8 or 9 yrs ago) I felt they had a very 'throwaway' culture going on at the time.

I am thinking of buying a bit of scrap cloth from the charity shop or the remnants pile at the fabric store and using one of the furoshiki ties instead of a handbag - I can't find the perfect handbag, and this seems like a good interim solution!

If you use good quality decorative bags, the receiver can use this same bag for gift giving. The same bag can be used numerous times by the individual recipients.