I recently found out that many local council kerbside recycling schemes now don't accept wrapping paper at all! This is because most wrapping paper has plastic sellotape stuck all over it and some wrapping paper (if it doesn't stay scrunched up) is actually plastic coated itself, or is glittery (aka covered in tiny bits of plastic which easily enter the foodchain - eek!) So wrapping paper placed in a recycling bin can cause the whole bin-load to be rejected and consigned to landfill. This led to a re-think of present wrapping in our house...
We actually give far fewer presents nowadays (having managed to agree a 'present amnesty' with most people we know well enough). Our kids get their birthday and Christmas presents from us 'wrapped' in a colourful (second hand) duvet cover / pillow case - depending on the size of the gift(s). If you keep an eye out in charity shops / Ebay then you can find pre-owned single-sized Christmas bedding sets up for grabs after the festive season - perfect for an eco-conscious Santa to use!
Also in the wrapping-up box is; brown paper tape (instead of sellotape), garden twine string e.g. Scottish-made jute from Nutscene (which is posted out with completely plastic-free packaging), salvaged fabric ribbon (for tying up the duvet cover / pillow case) and plain brown wrapping paper. 100% recycled brown paper is available on a 25m roll from Eco Craft for £7, it is wrapped in compostable bio-film. This is a real find as all other brown paper rolls I've spotted come wrapped in plastic (although p&p is a hefty £3.50 - £5.50 depending on the value of the order). So club together with friends and buy in bulk to share the delivery costs! If 10 of you buy a roll (total £70) plus £5.50 p&p, then you each need pay only 55p for delivery...
When wrapping birthday gifts for other children we usually use brown wrapping paper, plus brown paper tape and washi (colourful paper) tape. Then we decorate the brown paper with pens (once the parcel is wrapped) to celebrate the age / interests of the birthday girl / boy. We've switched to this pen-based decoration rather than painting / printing the paper, as paint actually contaminates recycling batches and so painted-on-paper is rejected by many council kerbside collections.
Washi (colourful paper) tape is a great way to make plain brown wrapping paper look beautiful. I stick it on to mimic (non-recyclabe) ribbon. Make sure that the washi tape you choose is glitter-free, on a cardboard roll and in plastic-free packaging - the 'Romantic Tape' set from Paperchase is plastic free (the tape itself and its packaging). The newer version is the 'Valentine's Tape' set. If you shop online then Ebay sells this washi tape costing from 99p per roll (with free p&p) which is sent out in non-plastic packaging - when buying from Ebay it always pays to message the seller requesting plastic-free packaging, just to make sure.
Sometimes only see-through tape will do, for example when fixing toddler-ripped-across-the-text book pages (sigh!) I am really pleased to see that Sellotape now sell a 'Zero Plastic' traditional-looking role of tape.
Not only is the packaging of this Sellotape plastic-free but the tape is too. This see-through tape cannot be recycled and therefore still needs to go into the general waste bin (so I still choose to use paper tape when I can) but I do like knowing that even if it ends up falling out of the bin bag on it's way to the refuse centre, then the tape won't be hanging around in nature for years to come.
As always, make sure you use up the (wrapping) items you already have, then when you need to re-stock please do consider these planet-friendlier options.