As I shopped the stores in search of the perfect wrapping for the gifts I bought this holiday season, I started to think about how much paper we, Americans, use each and every year simply to wrap presents. It’s unimaginable and a huge waste of our precious resources.
I came across this article promoting ‘ecoChici Reusable Fabric Wrap.’ My initial thoughts are, ok recycled wrapping? No thank you. But to my surprise, they quickly grew on me and I think they will convince you too; sure, there wouldn’t be the pull, rip, tear you’re used to, but it would be worth reducing our impact.
According to the article “Holiday Wrapping Paper,” Americans use an additional five million tons of waste during this time of the year. This includes wrapping paper, shoppings bags, and all the other good stuff on the back of Barbie and Elmo packages. They continue by stating, “Assuming it takes 15 trees per ton of wrapping paper, this amounts to 30 million trees cut down just to wrap our gifts.”
They offer some solutions to this problem:
1) Gift bags instead of wrapping paper
2) Reusable holiday wrapping
*They noted that some people burn their wrapping paper, but this is highly discouraged because it releases harmful fumes that affect our lungs.
Coming to the realization of how wasteful wrapping paper is, reading this article and seeing the ecoChici Reusable Fabric Gift Wrap has encouraged me to look into reusable wrapping before Valentine’s Day. It seems a little pricey, but to me it will be worth it to reduce my paper usage by that amount each year.
I hope this new fabric gift wrap becomes a lot more popular in the near future. It’s stylish and much better for our resources and the next generation’s future.
Mae Kalei Medley 