Eco-Friendly Gift Wrap Ideas for Christmas

Go green this holiday season with these eco-friendly gift wrap ideas. Recycled paper and other reusable items will make your gift wrapping look cohesive and gorgeous under your tree.

Every year I do some kind of themed wrapping paper where I try and make all of my presents look cohesive, including the faux presents I wrap up before Christmas. This year is no different, except that I've been focusing a lot more on eco-friendly gift wrap alternatives.

I will be the first to say that I am not an expert when it comes to eco-friendly, sustainable, or zero waste living. I know that I've been doing my part to try and slowly reduce waste and reduce single-use plastics in our house. So, today I wanted to share some ideas for wrapping paper, tape, and gift toppers that all are sustainable and eco-friendly.

Eco-Friendly Gift Wrapping Supplies

Purchase from Canada

• 

  Another thing that can't be recycled when it comes to wrapping is any of our typical adhesive tapes. Even the paper that has adhesive tape on it can't be recycled. Two really great alternatives are kraft paper tape and washi tape.

  

  Eco Friendly Tape Ideas

  Kraft Paper Tape

  

  Leather Cording

  Second is this faux leather cording. I really love both of these for wrapping because they hold up really well and are totally reusable. The leather cording can be shaped and manipulated and comes in so many different colours so it's very versatile.

  

  Greenery

  I love to add greenery to my gift wrap, whether faux or real. These are faux, but I have used real greenery from our yard before, which is great when you're wrapping something that's going to be opened a little closer to the time you're wrapping it.

  

  Reusable Gift Wrap Toppers

  Finally, there's all kinds of options for things you can use to top your gifts that are reusable, including pompoms, ornaments, little decorations that people can keep afterwards.

  I particularly love to put ornaments on top because they act as part of the gift as well. They can open it and keep the ornaments, and I think that's always extra special and looks really cute.

  I've also DIY'd some really cute gift toppers that I've used again and again, including these

• 

• 

Creating a Gift Wrap Theme

Wrapping a pretty set of gifts like this is always about trial and error and just trying different things out and seeing what looks good. The main thing I try to do to make sure my gifts look like a cohesive set is to repeat elements at least a couple of times.

I'll make sure to use the same things a couple of times, such as using the same colours in my gift toppers, the same ribbons a couple of times, or using the same kind of greenery on multiple gifts.

I also choose pieces to match the scale of the gift box, for example, with the larger box above, I'll choose use a larger ribbon so that it kind of fits the scale proportionally.

I usually add ribbon or cording to all of the gifts because one, it helps keep the entire group of gifts looking cohesive, and two, it adds a little bit more visual interest to the otherwise plain wrapping paper that we're using. The other advantage of something like cording is that you don't always have to attach every piece. You can just tuck it into the ribbon or the cording and usually it will stay put pretty nicely.

Then anything that I want to attach that doesn't tuck nicely into the cording can be taped on with washi tape. If you're curious about that

And here is how my pretty gift wrapped gifts looked when they were done. I was so happy with them. I think that they all look beautiful individually and as a nice group. You can see that I reused a lot of the same elements and definitely kept with the same colour theme to make everything look nice and cohesive.

Now you have beautiful gifts to sit under the tree as part of your decorations for the holiday season. If you do choose to use some of these eco-friendly alternatives, don't forget to also tell the people you're gifting to that everything is recyclable or reusable, so it doesn't end up mixed in with the waste!

Eco-Friendly Gift Ideas

If you're looking for some eco-friendly ideas to fill your stockings or gift those "hard-to-find-gifts-for" friends and family members, I've shared some of my

Dollar Store DIY Christmas Decorations