By Anitra Krishnan
As we all know, the Holidays are coming up! You know what that means right? Lots of gift giving and receiving. And that means a lot of wrapping paper.
Now, even though people do know this, I cannot stress enough, how important it is to NOT throw away your wrapping paper!! You are just freely killing trees each time you throw away wrapping paper!! Also, buying wrapping paper just to wrap gifts can be both expensive and bad for the environment. Why would you spend money on killing trees? Instead, try out the following tips so we can save a couple of trees this year during the Holidays.
Newspaper as Wrapping Paper:
This probably sounds familiar to most of you, but why buy wrapping paper, when you can just use old newspapers to wrap your gifts? It’s a great way to reuse newspapers and, let’s be honest, it actually looks pretty nice. This is a great way to avoid buying additional wrapping paper from the stores and invest money in the killing of trees.
Additionally, instead of throwing away newspaper wrappings after you receive a newspaper wrapped present, you can just toss it into the compost bin as newspaper is biodegradable. This means that it will be really good for the soil during the springtime once plants start to grow again! Or you could recycle it so that new paper can be made. Either way works! Just do NOT throw it in the garbage bin.
Reuse Wrapping Paper:
When you receive a present, try not to tear up the wrapping paper and throw it away. Instead, carefully open your gift and try to keep the wrapping paper intact as best as you can. That way, you can reuse this wrapping paper when you need to wrap a gift to give someone. Not only does this help you stock up on wrapping paper, but it also helps to reduce the amount of wrapping bought, which means that less trees will be cut down.
Simply Recycle:
This tip is not that hard or unknown. If you have wrapping paper that you just cannot reuse, the best thing to do is recycle it. That way, instead of cutting down more trees to make new wrapping paper, or other kinds of paper in general, factories can reuse the scraps of these used, and clean, pieces of paper to make new wrapping paper, cardstock, printer paper, and more.
Use Gifting Bags:
The final tip I have would be to just use gifting bags. Instead of buying wrapping paper to wrap your gifts, just toss your gift in a gift bag and give it to whoever you want to give the gift to. It is a very simple process, and it saves a number of trees from being cut down as the bag can also be reused by the receiver if they want to give something to someone else.
Paper bags are good to use, because they can be recycled if they tear, but any bag works. As long as you minimize how much you throw away, everyone’s happy!
These are some tips that I have for you all to help save trees this upcoming Holiday Season. Make sure to keep the Earth safe and healthy, especially during the holiday season as this is a time when many trees are cut down to make goods that are of high demand in the market. It would be a great holiday gift to give the Earth after all she’s been through. So get creative and use these tips, as well as some of your own ideas, to save a few trees and have a blast this Holiday season!