It’s Christmas morning and you and your family have gathered together to open presents. It’s all very neat and tidy and pretty and civilised, until you actually start opening…
There’s wrapping paper everywhere – on the floor, in your hair, stuck to the walls, in your dog’s mouth, and worst of all, in the bin.
Unfortunately, wrapping paper generally isn’t recyclable. We know, crazy, right? Surely, wrapping paper is just… paper? Oh no, it’s often made with plastics, coloured foil or even glitter – all of which affect its ability to be recycled. Then there’s the issue of the dreaded tape. We all want neat, precisely wrapped presents, and tape is a massive help with that. Yet, even if you’ve used recyclable paper, the mounds of sticky tape on it as you plunge it into the recycle bin would mean that it actually couldn’t be recycled.
So, what should we do then?
We were walking through the Victoria Centre Market when it hit us: fabric! Fabric is reusable and pretty! Using fabric to wrap presents is not a novel concept – the art of ‘Furoshiki’ is a Japanese style of wrapping and knotting fabric in order to transport clothes and gifts.
‘Buttons N Bobbins’ have the most gorgeous range of Christmas fabrics, and to be honest, it felt like a shame not to have anything to use them for. Until now.
After grabbing some festive fabric, we popped ‘round the corner to ‘Hobbies N Crafts’ for recyclable tags as well as some reusable string and decorations.
Then we set to work. The string holds the fabric in place, which means you don’t need any tape. However, it is a little harder to wrap with fabric on your own, so you might need to rope in a friend (no pun intended) when on your mission to save the planet this Christmas. Anyway, after enlisting a friend ourselves to hold down some folds, we finished! We weren’t quite on a ‘Furoshiki’ level, and we didn’t use knots to keep our presents together (opting for festive string instead), but the presents sure turned out to be beautiful!
Top tip: dry out some orange slices and use cinnamon sticks or pine cones as planet-friendly decorations!
Visit Victoria Centre Market to get materials and wrap your own presents sustainably this Christmas!
