Be Green, when wrapping all your gifts!

[Agschmid]

Half of the fun of the holidays is ripping into presents from family and friends or watching someone else do it. We might feel just a twinge or two of guilt as we crumple shreds of once-pristine paper waste into a trash bag and toss it to the curb for garbage collection, but what the hell, you're on much-needed vacation and you left all of your cares at the office.

Wrong.

The facts: In 2011, Great Britain alone racked up 227,000 miles of wasted paper after the holiday season. (That's enough paper to wrap the world nine times over around the equator.) And according to a study done by Stanford, if every American wrapped three presents in reused materials, the saved paper would cover 45,000 football fields.

The upshot of the guilt trip is that it leads to solutions like wrapping your gifts in the comics section and recycle it when the present party is done, or, say, reusable packaging. UK-based agency BEAF does the DIYers one better with Eden Paper, wrapping paper for the rest of us that you can plant once you're finished tearing into those gifts.

It's simple: By planting the used paper in some soil and watering it like a regular potted plant, you'll see sprouts in no time. As with Democratech's sprouting pencil and plantable OAT Shoes, the gift wrap is produced with the seeds embedded right into the paper. The brand is currently offering the paper in five flavors—chili peppers, onions, carrots, tomatoes and broccoli—but looks to include various flowers and herbs in the future. The gift wrap looks good, too—as good as it tastes, I'm sure. Design-wise, it's a much-needed upgrade from a lot of the holiday wrap you see around the time of year. There's only so much you can take when it comes to iridescent snowflakes and glittery ornaments.

Currently, the paper is being sold through Kickstarter with a promise to provide wrappers with their paper before the holidays. You can purchase Eden's Paper here.

[NYC_SKP]

1. Did you find that on the Core77 site?

You might have, if you checked out the story on that graffiti art project with video...

That's where I saw it some ten minutes ago. Here's a similar product: http://www.core77.com/blog/kickstarter/greener_graphite_a_sprouting_pencil_by_democratech_23246.asp

[Agschmid]

2. Love the pencil!

Yes I love the Core77 blog I forgot to include a link to it in my post so here goes:

http://www.core77.com

It's one of my must hit sites I visit everyday! Thanks!

[passiveporcupine]

3. thanks for these awesome ideas

[Agschmid]

4. No problem!

Someday I hope you can buy it in stores!

[LWolf]

5. While I haven't tried plantable paper,

I'm fairly green. I use re-usable bags; sometimes gift bags from gifts that were given to me, sometimes cloth grocery bags. I have a collection of smallish brown paper bags with handles and various snowman poses, made out of recycled paper, that I bought a few years back and am still using. I have a few starbucks bags gotten from picking up pastries for team meetings. I stuff bags with newspaper instead of tissue paper. I've been known, when I don't have a bag that fits, to wrap in newspaper. While the newspaper can be recycled, in my area of heating with wood stoves, it's generally re-used as a fire-starter.

After a family gift-opening, I collect the bags and bring them back home to use again the next year.

[Agschmid]

6. Wel then you are already very green!

Plantable paper in the NE is hard since we have winter we'd have to hold on to the paper for the next growing season, but I'm going to try it!

[LWolf]

7. I used to have plantable trees.

I'd bring it in the house and we'd decorate on xmas eve, and take it out and plant it the day after xmas so that the heat and dryer air in the house didn't damage the living tree any.

I could still do that here, but I'd have to dig the hole months in advance, since the ground freezes hard and deep, and I never remember to do that in the early fall rush to be ready for winter.

I don't have a tree of my own any more, since I live alone and spend xmas day elsewhere, but I do take family trees to my place when they are un-decorated; a few minutes with the saw and they are kindling and wood seasoning for the next season's winter in the wood stove.

[Earth_First]

8. We've been flooding the family with gift boxes, thrift store tins for years...

Enough of them have been reused that we recieve our original boxes, tins and jars almost yearly.

The paper that we do use is high post consumer recycled content packing paper that we reuse throughout the winter as wood stove kindling starter.

Thanks for the reminder OP so that everyone can kick in a bit during the holidays!

[Agschmid]

9. I hate seeing the big black trash bags full of paper around...

Reuse people!

[Earth_First]

10. +1

My mother in law runs a thriving ceramics shop on Ebay, whatever doesn't make it to the wood stove ends up as packaging for the postal boxes, taboot!

[Agschmid]

11. I work for a company...

And we sometimes receive shipments from other countries and often times the paper things are packed in are clearly discarded packaging from other products.

I always find it pretty funny.