As you sit around the fireplace, perhaps sipping a glass of wine ready to take on the task of wrapping all your treasures, or if you’re still trying to come up with a few last minute gift giving ideas, read on…

As you can imagine, Christmas is a very wasteful time of year. I came across a few ‘waste saving’ strategies for wrapping all your Christmas gifts this year:

1. Turn the present into packaging

Scarves, pashminas and mittens all make excellent presents and even better wrapping materials. Wrap a novel in a scarf and tie it up with some ribbon. For larger items, wrap a larger box in a pashmina and secure it with a large bow. For babies or toddlers, bundle a small toy in a receiving blanket. (CBC)

2. Recycle your calendar

At the end of the year, don’t toss out your beautiful wall calendar. Instead, save yourself some money and use the pages as wrapping paper. Or, if it’s time to retire some worn or ripped posters from the walls, use them as a wrapping alternative.  (CBC)

3. Use your childrens’ artwork as beautiful one of a kind wrap

Show off your budding Picasso, by wrapping a gift in artwork created by him/her. The recipient will appreciate the personal touch and your child will feel special.

4. Go beyond a bow

Usable materials like fabric ribbons, shoelaces or even mittens on strings can be used to tie up presents in place of plastic ribbon that will be tossed in the garbage bag. For a hand-knit gift, use some leftover yarn to tie around a box and embellish with some whimsical pompoms. (CBC)

5. Use beautiful fabrics that can be reused

Fabric gift bags make beautiful, personal and unique gift wraps for all gift-giving occasions. Even better, they’re re-usable and are made of recycled materials. Earth Easy has the ihow-to.

Martha Stewart in December’s issue of Living suggests putting Christmas wrap from gifts received in a shredder and using that extra padding for shipping other items throughout the year. Not a bad idea!

…And for those of you last minute shoppers (I include myself in this group), here are some ‘green’ gift ideas…

1. (This one is my personal favorite) A ceramic diffuser and some natural oil blends to naturally fragrance a home. This takes the place of the toxic Glade Plugins and other chemically based ‘air fresheners’.

2. Along the same lines is a car scenter. Place a few drops of essential oil onto the scent pad and plug into a cigarette lighter. Better than those stinky little trees you can hang from your rear view mirror. (Saje)

3. Organic/hemp clothing is always a terrific ‘green’ gift.

4. Organic body products (shampoo, aftershave, cologne)

5. You can also offer to do something for someone on your list like shovel their driveway for the season, plant their garden in the spring etc…

Hope you can make use of 1 or more of these ideas. Have a safe, healthy holiday!!