eco friendly Christmas

[badgercat]

So, enough about trees already how about all the paper/trees that go into wrapping paper when you could use this:

http://wrapsacks.com

Every season, every occaision and it's like the "Where's George" of gifts.

I ask my parents to wrap my presents in old newspapers/magazines/etc that would otherwise be thrown away and I do the same for them. This was a tradition I started with my college roommates. My mom made a bit of a stink about it at first, as she's very into Christmas and prides herself on her wrapping abilities (which are quite lovely, btw), but a couple Christmases ago she wrapped my presents in the classifieds and stacked them neatly in 2 reusable shopping bags.

[withm]

my sisters and I pride ourselves on opening gifts carefully to preserve the paper and we re-use it for years. I still buy new when I come across a particularly nice roll of paper knowing full well it will be used again and again. We've had a lot of laughs when the really old stuff shows up under the tree.

[malkin]

I have some fabric wraps that I've used repeatedly and nice ribbons.

One year I sewed my dad's gift into the wrap.

[nc tam]

Several years ago we decorated plain brown shopping bags using construction paper, markers, paint, whatever we had in the apartment. Placed gifts inside and folded down the tops. We're still using some of them. Every couple of years we make a few more as some get gifted away. Wish I had thought to put the date on the originals as our favorites have quite a few years on them now.

[NoNo]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34365419...ience-science/ I don't know, my artificial tree is 20+ years old, not the "few years" they're claiming. Still going strong, too. But maybe literally going green is the better option

[GLC1968]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/34365419...ience-science/ I don't know, my artificial tree is 20+ years old, not the "few years" they're claiming. Still going strong, too. But maybe literally going green is the better option

I think that depends on where you are. Right now, I wouldn't doubt that a real tree would be 'greener' for us since we are surrounded by tree farms. The problem is that we already have a fake one and I sure as hell am not going to toss it into a landfill if it's still perfectly fine. We bought the fake one when we lived in Florida. The real trees available to us down there were trucked down from North Carolina - I hardly find that 'sustainable'...so we figured that a fake tree was the better option. Plus - fire was a real danger there because the trees were already long since dried out before they got to us (sometimes even sprayed with green paint to hide the brownness!).

Now we are stuck with our fake tree until we can find an alternate use for it! Christmas tree clothes line? Christmas tree bird feeder? Christmas tree goat scratcher? Hmmmmm......

[NoNo]

That's a good point. Certainly sounds like there's a northern bias to the study. I wonder if someone will come up with an artificial tree recyling program? There's got to be some use for the metal.