That's a Wrap!

Christmas. It’s the most wonderful time of the year. And one of the most wasteful. I’m all for the spirit of giving, it’s the wrapping of the gifts that I have an issue with. Wrapping paper is so crazy wasted in this part of the world. Here are the shocking facts:

- The gift wrap industry now accounts for $2.6 billion annually in retail sales

- As much as half of the 85 million tons of paper products Americans consume every year goes toward packaging, wrapping and decorating goods.

- Additional food waste, shopping bags, packaging, wrapping paper, bows and ribbons - it adds up to an extra 1 million tons a week to our landfills.

- Wrapping paper and shopping bags alone account for about 4 million tons of trash annually in the United States.

- From Thanksgiving to New Years Day, household waste increases by over 25 percent.

Reasons Wrapping Paper Can Be a Wee Bit Difficult to Recycle...
#1 Reason--many of the materials it's made out of are non-recyclable!
Rest of Reasons:
- Wrapping paper is often dyed and laminated.
- It can contain non-paper additives such as gold and silver coloring, glitter and plastics.
- It usually has tape on it from being wrapped around a gift.

Temporary Solution: Wrap with newspaper, recycled paper, or other reused/reusable materials (example: gift bags, etc).

Little known fact: If every American family wrapped three presents in reused materials, it would save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.

Save wrapping paper. Save your planet. It’ll thank you later :)


Sources: Earth911, Eco-Chick.com