christmas wrapping paper

arightdinger

Hi dont know if this is the right place to post this?
We have threatened for a couple of years now, to wrap presents in newspaper to mainly save waste (I HATE WASTING THINGS).
This year we have carried out our threat and donated £20.00 to a local charity instead (this is more than we would have saved).

We printed off some tags with an explanation as to what we were doing, so our recipients dont think we are tight. Hopefully next year our family and friends will maybe do the same?

have we done right, what do people think?

foxybabe

i like the idea as i try to be very green. I don't know whether i could use newspaper though. I always use recycleable paper.

john_kent

I bought a few pressies late in the online sales. Got sonic rivals for my nephew for £16.99 and a cd box thingy for dad for £14.99. SO gave them the emails.

They all know im broke

Nile

Hello arightdinger

Welcome to (posting on) the MSE site.:wave:

Nile

abbecer

I think it is a fantastic idea. I'm hoping to get my family on board for something similar next year. I want to donate to a local diabetes charity that helped care for our deceased uncle. I intend to donate rather than send cards and hoping i can get cousins etc to do the same.

Rebecca x

GiveItBack

Hi Rebecca.

Give them a call a little while before you do it, OR even better, right now. They might know ways that you can easily let your friends and family know what you're up to.

lswwong

Not a bad idea at all.

Long time ago, some German school friends used to make envelopes out of select pages of high end glossy magazines (e.g. Vogue). They were pretty cool and stylish. I suppose if you use double pages from the FT's "How to Spend It" magazine (effectively an A2 size piece of paper, thereabouts), that will be large enough to wrap presents up with.

kay41_2

I was talking to my father in law about this yesterday marvelling at the number of cards they had and how it's nice to hear from people you hardly ever see, but a bit pointless to get a card from someone you see every day at work. I like the idea of e-cards, but I think we are a few years away from that. Christmas cards are part of the decoration of Christmas and surely a bit of a yardstick that people are thinking of you. My father in law said he thought e-cards were really impersonal and too generic for him. He said he likes to handwrite letters to his friends and put them in cards at Christmas. I used to do this, depending on how much time I had and I do like to receive such letters or even a few lines in a card, but this year in particular I had no time to do this. And of course the production and delivery of cards provides employment - what a dilemma.

I was trying to explain to him about all the waste and the sustainability of it but he wasn't interested - he is retired and has all the time in the world!

I recently found a website (can't remember the name) where you could buy address labels to reuse old envelopes with a written message on the bottom explaining that you were recycling envelopes deliberately in order to be 'green' rather than stingy. I guess you could print your own labels with this message on. I have also made envelopes myself before and a good template can be made from ungluing an envelope and drawing round it on your chosen paper.

I have a real dilemma betwen appearing to be stingy and being green - how does one resolve this?

tawnyowls

Many charities collect cards after Christmas, so that could sort out the difficulties with your dad. I generally try to recycle envelopes, but I think Christmas cards are a bit of an exception, really - they are the time many of us think about contacting people we haven't contacted in a long while. If you buy cards from an environmental charity, perhaps that would help you feel better about them?

C00kie_2

Something I did a couple of years ago was for the really nice big xmas cards I got, I'd slice them in half (recycling the bit with the message on and keeping the cover) then use that like a xmas postcard the following year, or to enter competitions or the like where the actual card didn't matter.

C_Ronaldo

i like the idea of using newspaper to wrap the presents in