It might seem that wrapping paper is something that is easy to recycle, but that’s not the case! Anything with glitter or shiny metallic stuff on it is likely to end up in landfill even if you do put it in your recycling bin.

So, this year, Nathan and I have tried to be a bit more environmentally conscious in the way we wrap. Below is what we’ve come up with.

Number 1: Brown paper. I brought a roll of 50 meters for £12.49 off Amazon. It seems like a lot of money for one roll of wrapping paper but when you think that it’s fairly standard to pay over £2 for 3 meters of paper, it’s actually great value! But brown paper looks fairly dull and boring by itself so…

Number 2: Reusable ribbon. We went to The Range and got lots of red ribbon of different thicknesses to put on different sized presents.

This purchase was definitely more expensive than the single use ribbons you can get, but that’s the point, it can be used over and over again! It would be lovely to think that these ribbons might be reused by other people in the future, for decoration, for their own gifts or anything else!

Number 3: Pretty stamps. Being big into bullet journaling means that I’ve got lots of stamps and ink. We’ve used a combination of Christmas stamps and faith stamps to decorate the brown paper. We went mostly with red to match the ribbon, but with lots of different colours, the possibilities are endless! I wondered if it would be better if the paper could be stamped before wrapping, but by doing it afterwards it’s easier to make sure that the images are the right way around.

Number 4: Turn cards into gift tags. After taking the the Christmas decorations and cards down in January, I wrote this blog. I was trying to make a conscious effort to find something to do with all the Christmas cards. By cutting up the cards from last Christmas, we have a whole pile of unique gift tags ready to go!

Number 5: Reuse old gift bags. When we are all done, we’ll dip into our drawer of gift bags that people have given us in the past and put the presents inside. When gift bags are so sturdy and long lasting, it would be a shame not to! And let’s face it, we all do it!

So there we go, 5 ways to eco wrap! We all know that we need to be better about how we treat the planet. It takes all of us to make little changes in order for a big change to happen.

Nathan and I haven’t got it right yet by any means; this time next year I’d love to be able to say that we have managed to shop a lot more locally, as we did a lot of online shopping this year! But this is a change we have managed to make this year, and I’m really pleased that we did.