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macro shot of assorted wrapped gift boxes
macro shot of assorted wrapped gift boxes
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Life

Sustainable Gift Wrapping: Newspaper And Brown Paper

Vanessa Silva
Rachel Johnson
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at WVU chapter.

With Christmas just around the corner, stores are being flooded in the rush to purchase Christmas gifts. With the purchasing of gifts comes the wrapping, and inevitably you will find wrapping stands outside of stores to make it irresistible. And is anyone to blame? It is almost necessary to complete the image of Christmas: the beautifully decorated gifts under the Christmas tree. It is not the same if you just throw the gifts with no wrapping, and where is the fun in that?

 

 

The biggest issue with traditional wrapping paper is that its dyes and lamination make recycling difficult. This means that most of that paper does not end up in a plastic bin for reuse, but in trash bags headed for a landfill, and we produce 4 million pounds of it.

To get an idea of how much that is, the typical density of gift wrap is 60 grams per square meter (or about 0.012 pounds per square foot).  At 4 million pounds, that’s over 333 million square feet, or about 5,787 NFL football fields worth of wrapping. One option to reduce your contribution to this is to try and find wrapping paper made with recycled content. A better option is to wrap with paper that is already lying around like newspaper or brown paper. 

No worries if this is your first time, follow this tutorial to sustainably wrap your gifts with newspaper this holiday season, and if wrapping is not your style, follow this tutorial to make gift bags out of newspapers as well.

 

 

If you want a more neutral look, you can wrap your gifts with brown paper. This approach also gives you the freedom to paint over the paper and create infinitely many designs — allowing you to personalize for each giftee. 

 

 

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Edited by Sydney Keener

 

Vanessa is a Venezuelan student at West Virginia University. She is majoring in Political Science, concentrating in International Relations, and minoring in Criminology. Outside of Her Campus, Vanessa serves as secretary for the International Student Organization, is a general member of the Student Government Organization and works as the event assistant at Brownfield’s office on campus. After graduation, Vanessa hopes to attend law school and graduate in Human Rights and International Law, and dreams of one day opening her own law-firm that specializes equal access to legal advice for all.
Rachel is a graduate student at WVU majoring in journalism with minors in Appalachian studies, history and political science. In addition to writing for Her Campus, she is also a publicity intern for Arts and Entertainment and a news intern for Univerisity Relations. She is from Princeton, West Virginia and loves her state and its beautiful mountains. She is passionate about many things including dogs, musicals and the Mountaineers.