It's getting tough out there. Feeling the pinch?

euronorris

For gift tags, I use a simple but effective hole punch and recycle all of our birthday/mothers day/xmas/etc etc cards this way. I have so many cmas tags now that i give some away to friends and family to use. The inused parts go in recycling (if no glitter). And it means that any glitter cards at least get a second use before being binned. Example 

Mrs_Salad_Dodger

Absolutely beautiful euronorris 🤩

annieb64

Those are lovely.  Do you cut them out by hand- not sure I'd ever get them looking so neat.

Pollycat

euronorris said:

Doom_and_Gloom said:

euronorris said:

For this reason, our council will not accept any christmas wrapping paper, regardless of whether or not it is plastic free. They ended up with too much contamination and rejected loads. Not only did this mean more stuff ended up in landfill, but fuel was also expended in both directions (to the recycling plant and back). So they have only accepted brown paper at Christmas time for the last few years.

The simple answer is to switch to fabric wrapping and reuse it every year.
My family mostly use festive bedding to do this. Pillow cases for little bits all together as a sack. You can use the festive duvet covers for larger gifts as needed. No need to cut them up.
We have been using the same set for many years now as have my parents. It saves waste and money over time.
You can of course do the same for birthdays. 
You can also just use a piece of fabric that is large enough. I have a largish square scarf that has been used a fair few times to wrap gifts. I took the ideas from Japanese furoshiki; cloth wrapping. 

I've also got gift bags and bottle bags that have been in use many years also.

Unfortunately my OH likes to use wrapping paper for a lot of his gift giving to his family, which he usually buys in the sales.
I do get him to reuse gift/bottle bags where possible (and he does ask for them back if they won't use it again themselves, indeed he's been given ones others had been given gifts in to add to our little collection 😁).

It is a shame that wrapping is being dismissed in recycling if not brown traditional paper. However I understand their reluctance as it isn't always or easily obvious which ones are recyclable Vs those that aren't by glance which is no help for workers.

There's no easy answer, but I do know 2 things - 1. It's better to have many people doing it imperfectly than to only have a handful doing it perfectly and 2. Large corporations have a much bigger impact than the individual and change needs to happen with them first and foremost.

As long as those 'many people' don't contaminate large amounts of recycled items by doing it 'imperfectly'.

GaleSF63

euronorris said:

For gift tags, I use a simple but effective hole punch and recycle all of our birthday/mothers day/xmas/etc etc cards this way. I have so many cmas tags now that i give some away to friends and family to use. The inused parts go in recycling (if no glitter). And it means that any glitter cards at least get a second use before being binned. Example 

I love the shape!  Do you find yourself looking at cards as you receive them, to judge if there are gift tags in the making?
 I have a pair of fancy-edged craft scissors hovering when the cards are taken down. And apart from the recycling aspect, the tags made from cards are usually a lot nicer than those you can buy.

Brambling

Personally i think as long as 100% of us try to do as much as possible, hopefully at least 80% that's better than 20% doing 100% and by that I mean doing what we do 'perfectly' to sure ensure we don't contaminate etc.  

euronorris

Pollycat said:

euronorris said:

Doom_and_Gloom said:

euronorris said:

For this reason, our council will not accept any christmas wrapping paper, regardless of whether or not it is plastic free. They ended up with too much contamination and rejected loads. Not only did this mean more stuff ended up in landfill, but fuel was also expended in both directions (to the recycling plant and back). So they have only accepted brown paper at Christmas time for the last few years.

The simple answer is to switch to fabric wrapping and reuse it every year.
My family mostly use festive bedding to do this. Pillow cases for little bits all together as a sack. You can use the festive duvet covers for larger gifts as needed. No need to cut them up.
We have been using the same set for many years now as have my parents. It saves waste and money over time.
You can of course do the same for birthdays. 
You can also just use a piece of fabric that is large enough. I have a largish square scarf that has been used a fair few times to wrap gifts. I took the ideas from Japanese furoshiki; cloth wrapping. 

I've also got gift bags and bottle bags that have been in use many years also.

Unfortunately my OH likes to use wrapping paper for a lot of his gift giving to his family, which he usually buys in the sales.
I do get him to reuse gift/bottle bags where possible (and he does ask for them back if they won't use it again themselves, indeed he's been given ones others had been given gifts in to add to our little collection 😁).

It is a shame that wrapping is being dismissed in recycling if not brown traditional paper. However I understand their reluctance as it isn't always or easily obvious which ones are recyclable Vs those that aren't by glance which is no help for workers.

There's no easy answer, but I do know 2 things - 1. It's better to have many people doing it imperfectly than to only have a handful doing it perfectly and 2. Large corporations have a much bigger impact than the individual and change needs to happen with them first and foremost.

As long as those 'many people' don't contaminate large amounts of recycled items by doing it 'imperfectly'.

Absolutely. What I'm referring to more is that it's better for many people to be doing something/a few things consistently, rather than worrying about having to be absolutely perfect and never ever buy plastic again, and stop using toilet roll, give up their car (even though it may be essential to their job/life), and ensure that absolutely every choice they make is perfectly 100% eco friendly. It's unachievable for the vast majority, and people can be put off from even making simple changes if they feel everyone else is still going to put them down for it.

I wasn't meaning to infer that it's OK for people to recycle incorrectly. Sorry if that's how it read.

euronorris

annieb64 said:

Those are lovely.  Do you cut them out by hand- not sure I'd ever get them looking so neat.

It's a card punch in that shape. I use a guillotine to cut them down to the width and length I want and then just punch the top.

euronorris

GaleSF63 said:

euronorris said:

For gift tags, I use a simple but effective hole punch and recycle all of our birthday/mothers day/xmas/etc etc cards this way. I have so many cmas tags now that i give some away to friends and family to use. The inused parts go in recycling (if no glitter). And it means that any glitter cards at least get a second use before being binned. Example 

I love the shape!  Do you find yourself looking at cards as you receive them, to judge if there are gift tags in the making?
 I have a pair of fancy-edged craft scissors hovering when the cards are taken down. And apart from the recycling aspect, the tags made from cards are usually a lot nicer than those you can buy.

Haha yes! And some don't work well at all. But I usually find I can make at least one tag from each card, often 2 or 3

tooldle

I've come to learn that reducing our negative impact on the planet is not as straightforward as we would like to think. With companies often choosing to tout a different item as the solution. When, as another poster already said, the real answer is for us to reduce. Our older style of shopping is the better option, with butchers, greengrocers and refill type shops which would have a much bigger impact. Whatever way we look at it, recycling still requires more energy to 

Reduce, reuse/recycle and innovate. Steel is a great example. Less energy needed to reprocess than to create virgin steel. Innovation needed to ensure the chemistry is correct, removing elements detrimental to required properties and /or allowing the charging scrap to be ‘characterised’ prior to processing. 

There is no straightforward answer and mostly the quick wins have already been identified with desired outcomes achieved or on the way to being achieved.  

Food packaging is complex, with functionality that most people are unaware of. Keeping food ‘looking’ fresh is part of the functionality. From experience, a freshly cut slab of steak on a meat counter quickly discolours. Wrap it in packaging and it keeps its colour for a longer period. Which option generates more waste / requires more energy / is better for net zero, and is whatever answer you give, holding true for all meats or just this steak? A complex problem.

carbon capture is also important