Other reasons gift wrapping paper is such a pain to recycle include However, we do not recommend using gift wrap as a fire starter since the chemicals and additives in it can become cancer-causing or damage your lungs if burned. Moore told the reporter on a second thought. When asked whether he’d put wrapping paper in the recycle bin, Moore – a self-professed “avid recycler” replied, “I’d throw it away.” In many cases, recycling it is just not worth the effort. Gift wrap is very thin and contains so many dies that paper mills need tons of additional chemicals to process it. In a short interview for, Atlanta-based paper recycling consultant Bill Moore explained why single-use wrapping paper is so hard on recyclers. Even paper recycling experts are reluctant to give a black and white answer to the question. The big problem with holiday wrapping paper is that it is a recycling nightmare. study found that 60% of the British population is confused about whether to recycle wrapping paper (the number might be higher across the pond)
household would reuse gift wrapping paper on just 3 gifts annually, we would could cover 45,000 football fields with the saved materials. Americans’ love for Christmas cards is so wasteful (more than 2.5 billion cards are sold each year) that a 10-story high football field could be filled to the brim with all the resulting trash every year.The average American produces 25% more trash over the holiday season than in the rest of the year.alone produces 4.6 million pounds of festive wrapping paper annually, half of which ends up in the nation’s landfills by the year’s end 30 million trees are turned into gift wrapping paper every year, as you need 15 trees to produce a tone of gift wrap.82% of Americans are set to carry on the tradition every single year, with 34% planning on spending more than $100 just on holiday decorations (gift wrap included).Every year, America spends a whopping $3.2 billion just on gift wrap, according to Hallmark, but the number could be a lot higher (around $7 billion), according to Sundale Research.Even though gift wrapping paper accounts for just 2 percent of the paper market by volume (because it is so lightweight), it accounts for 10% of the entire market by revenue (since it is so expensive).Meanwhile, the gift-wrapping industry ballooned to a $9.6 billion annual business ( as of 2015), while 25 million more tons of paper waste gets churned out during the gift giving season every year only in the U.S.A. The tradition, however, has proved very wasteful. The initial design of the first commercial gift wrap was a simple combination of red, green, and white, but it was a huge hit with customers.
It consisted of enticing colored tissue sheets with (or without) festive elements. retail giant Hallmark decided to sell decorative gift wrap in all its Kansas stores.Īt the time, gift wrapping paper was very simple, as people usually wrapped their presents in either newspaper or plain brown or white paper. The modern concept of gift wrapping started in 1917, when the U.S. Surprisingly, though, the gift-wrapping tradition is fairly new. Plus, if we look at the numbers, we see that wrapping our gifts in single use wrapping paper is a tremendously wasteful habit.īut the idea is so deeply rooted in our minds that we feel that the holiday season would not be complete without it (We’ll show you some surprising alternatives to debunk that idea in a bit.) One of the surveys asked the British population a few years ago.Ī whopping 60% replied that they did not know and the confusion could be even greater in the developed, less eco-educated nations. On the other hand, survey after survey reveal that people are confused about the recyclability of wrapping paper in the Western World. alone and 30 million trees being cut down to produce said paper every year, single use gift wrap is steadily turning into an ecological nightmare right under our noses. With over 2 million pounds of wrapping paper ending up in the landfills in the U.S.