Less Waste: Sustainable gift wrapping ideas

This blogpost ist also available in German / auf Deutsch

I am not a Zero Waste expert, but here and there I have found such simple alternatives in everyday life that I absolutely want to share them with you! Today the topics is packaging gifts sustainably!

(Transparency: This blog post contains advertising without an order, ie unpaid) Do you already have all your presents ready? For me it is always not so much stress because I have only a small family in Germany. Nevertheless, there always ends up being some stuff which has to be wrapped up nicely. With regards to this, my family has always been unconsciously sustainable:

Gifts were always unpacked very carefully in order to use the paper at least once more. And my aunt hasn’t used  tape for as long as I can remember and instead always uses string and also wraps a lot in recycled materials or fabrics.

And that’s a good thing! I can’t seem to find exact statistics, but if every German citizen consumed 100 grams of wrapping paper for Christmas, then that would sum up to about 8,000 tons of garbage (source ZDF) produced only in December!

I have already presented some sustainable gift ideas. Today, it’s about how you present the gifts in the most beautiful, but also most sustainable, way. In order to stop beating around the bush for a long time, I will get straight to my 7 tips on how to pack gifts sustainably:

1. Reuse old wrapping paper as my parents always do. But that also means unwrapping your own presents carefully and rolling the paper up carefully again. In general, you can also collect paper or other materials suitable for gifts throughout the year, e.g. fine paper that many clothes from online shops come wrap in, or old posters you want to discard, just to name a few ideas!
2. Do not use a tape. Instead, strings or ribbons that can be recycled, e.g. gifts from the previous year or from other packaging.
3. Pack gifts in boxes or glasses that can be reused quickly and easily. Homemade gifts look so much nicer in a glass and I always have some empty canning jars around that look great with a beautiful ribbon and a handwritten written card!
4. Don’t buy decoration separately, I simply use either decoration from my home (for example, mini-macrames that I make during the year or dried flowers), or use natural materials, e.g. Jute stripes, dried leaves, dried eucalyptus twigs, conifer branches, dried flowers, etc.
5. Wrapping in newspaper: With a beautiful ribbon, a nicely designed card or a bit of sustainable decoration, the whole thing looks very high quality and creative!
6. Give away gifts in small bags: Through my blogger work, I have accumulated a relatively large number of small cloth bags in the last year, especially from beauty boxes or beauty samples. By reusing these I can save a lot of paper! Jenni (below) also explains in her article how to make and design such bags yourself!
7. Wrap in Fabrics: This technique is called Furoshiki and you might have seen this technique in a Lush store. On YouTube you will find many tutorials and the result looks so beautiful! The fabrics can then be used over and over again, or you can make the fabric itself can be a gift. You can use a nice dishcloth or a scarf that you wanted to give away anyway, for example.

A few questions for you: Have you ever thought about the topic of sustainable gift packaging? How do you pack presents?

PS: Most of the pictures in this post were taken at an event hosted by Krautkopf with Manufactum. There we made two DIY gifts that were super easy, but certainly would make anyone happy to receiver them! The pictures from the event turned out beautifully, so you should also have a look over there 🙂