Picture this: It’s the afternoon of December 25th, and your living room is now littered with wrapping paper, gift boxes, ribbons, and bows. Now what?
My biggest advice would be to avoid this situation in the first place by wrapping your presents the Zero Waste way. There are so many ways to beautifully wrap gifts using recyclable, reusable, compostable, and natural materials (see how I wrap my gifts here!) If you didn’t go the low waste route this year, don’t worry, there’s always next year!
The best thing to do now is to responsibly dispose of your holiday waste.
It’s important to remember, no matter how tempting it might be, to not throw things into the recycling bin unless you’re confident that they’re actually recyclable.
Why, what’s the harm in doing that? When we toss nonrecyclable items into the blue bin and hope for the best, it contaminates the rest of the bin. This often means that the entire recycling bin will get trashed because it’s easier to do that than sort out all nonrecyclable bits from the rest.
Here’s a cheat sheet on what is and what’s not recyclable to help you better clean up after Christmas, birthdays, or other trashy celebrations…
Bows (Toss)
Bows are often made of a mix of plastic-coated paper, staples, and sticky glue, which makes them very difficult to recycle. So while bows may look pretty, they’re terribly unattractive to paper mills and recycling plants.
The good news is, bows are perfect to reuse time and time again. If they become less sticky, all you have to do is add a bit of Kraft Tape to the bottom and they’re good as new.
If your bows are too warned down or not special enough to save (sad), the next best thing to do is toss them.
Wrapping Paper (Depends…Toss or Recycle?)
Whether or not you can recycle wrapping paper depends on the materials of the paper itself.
If you opted for a glittery, glossy, metallic, cellophane, or a velvety finish, the best thing to do is toss it. These types of paper are nonrecyclable because they either don’t contain enough paper fibers (aka imposter paper) or they’re covered with a thin layer of plastic.
Plain wrapping paper can be recycled. A good way to test if your wrapping paper passes the blue bin test is by scrunching it into a ball. If it scrunches, it can be recycled.
Gift Bags (Depends…Toss or Recycle?)
Like wrapping paper, the recyclability of gift bags depends on the material of the bag. If your gift bag is made entirely of paper, it can be recycled. If the bag is glittery, glossy, metallic, or velvety, it cannot be recycled.
But don’t toss it! Gift bags are great to reuse again and again. If someone wrote a name in the name tag, simply cut it off, toss it, and voila the bag is good as new. If the bag starts to rip and becomes unsalvageable, then toss it.
Cards (Depends…Toss or Recycle?)
Again, sorry you’re probably getting tired of me saying this, it depends on the material of the card.
Pure paper cards can be recycled, no problem. If the card has some extra glitz on it (think: glitter, metallic embossing, etc) or if it’s printed on shiny photo paper, toss it.
Here are some of my favorite ways to send cards, without creating trash.
Tissue Paper (Depends…Compost or Toss?)
Tissue paper cannot be recycled, but it can be composted if it’s plain paper. If it has sparkles in it, it’s trash.
Ribbon (Toss)
Ribbons are a recycling plants’ worst. nightmare.
Because they’re so long and thin, they usually end up getting tangled around the machinery that helps to separate larger recyclables from smaller ones. When this happens, it clogs up the process and the only way to fix it is by manually shutting down the facility to untangle it. Talk about a big hassle for a silly ribbon. The same happens with plastic bags, twine, and anything else that’s long and stringy. Always toss ribbon.
Boxes (Recycle)
Robert Reed, a spokesperson for Recology San Francisco, says that cardboard is one of the best materials to recycle because it’s clean, easy to reprocess, and every ton of cardboard that is reclaimed saves 17 trees from being cut down to make new cardboard.
The important thing to remember with boxes is to break them down so that they’re flat. Otherwise, they take up too much space in recycling trucks, which can result in having to take multiple trips and burn more fossil fuels.
If your box has tape on it, that’s okay! A bit of tape is fine. If the box is totally covered with plastic tape, peel some off to make the recycling process easier.
To save you this extra step, at Package Free we use totally recyclable paper tape. See what else makes our shipping different 👀📦
Point Blank: When it comes to holiday wrapping, it’s better to reuse what you can, and best to not use it at all!
