With the gift giving season upon us, we have lots of shopping alternatives: the local mall, big box stores, catalogue mail order, and the internet. No matter which shopping path we choose, it’s either “shop until we drop” or “pick before we click”. Hauling shopping bags around the mall, collecting shirt boxes for gift wrapping, or unpacking items we have ordered on-line, our holiday gift gathering techniques bring lots of extra packaging. Holiday shopping can be stressful – on us and on the environment! Please don’t get me wrong, I am not a “Bah Humbug” type of gal, but I do believe there is a lot everyone can do to cut down on excessive packaging.

The gift wrap industry is a big one; estimated annual sales are between $2.6 and $2.7 billion. According to Earth911, “wrapping paper and shopping bags alone account for about 4 million tons of trash annually”. Why trash? All gift wrap is simply not recyclable- many papers are coated with plastics, strewn with glitter, or laminated in foil. Unfortunately, these blended papers end up adding to our landfills. When looking for gift wrap, choose uncoated, printed papers that can be recycled. To be even more “green” use gift wrap made from recycled paper that is itself recyclable. There are several on-line retailers which offer eco-friendly gift wrap. Sites like Pristine Planet even allow you to price compare gift wrap. And, don’t forget when collecting the spent gift wrap to rip off the cellophane tape, it makes the paper non-recyclable.


Besides gift wrap concerns, items ordered on-line bring additional outer and inner packaging with them. Recently, I purchased two document type gifts from a well known internet retailer. Because my customer information is stored in the company’s database, the shopping experience went quickly and without a snag. (No waiting in a long cashier’s line, no hauling bags around the mall). Talk about avoiding stress, technology is a great thing!! Anyway, the two “same topic” items (a one page laminated quick tip guide and a thin manual) arrived at my home in separate cartons on different days. Together the items could have packed neatly in one manila envelope, yet the packaging was 10 times larger than the unbreakable products!! A bit excessive don’t you think? While the front end of my shopping experience was positive, the back end was somewhat negative. Although my gifts arrived intact and on time, the excessive packaging (the manual was also fully wrapped in plastic around a corrugated back board) put a damper on my gift giving enthusiasm. The packaging used to get the gifts to my home (for further packaging) was over the top. On a more positive note, at least one of the packing cartons was made from recycled corrugated. Fortunately, for me, the more eco-friendly carton was printed with, “Rate this packaging:” and a web address was listed. You bet I rated the entire shipping experience. We need to let retailers know that as customers we care about the impact their operations have on the environment. As for my gift, it is now being given without wrap; I can’t bear to add anything more to it.


To wrap it up, I must add that so far I have avoided Styrofoam peanuts. If the holidays bring these drain clogging polluters your way, please contact The Plastic Loose Fill Council or phone: 800-826-2214 and find a drop-off reuse/recycle location near you. “Hum”, let’s keep these “Buggers” out of the waste stream. Happy Packaging!


© 2009 Recycle Life, LLC
The RecyGal^TM and the RecyGal character, logo are trademarks and registered copyrights of Recycle Life , LLC

References for this article were obtained from:
www.earth911,“Wrap’sody of Wraps” Gifts & Decorative Accessories, 1998, www.loosefillpackaging.com

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 10th, 2009 at 8:59 am and is filed under Corrugated material, Helpful websites, Paper, Recycling, Wrapping Paper. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.