eco-friendly giftwrap. It's the first thing your gift recipient sees. The "pre-gift" so to speak.  With endless varieties and choice when it comes to paper, ribbons and bows, giftwrap is a fun way to celebrate an occasion and showcase your gift-wrapping talents.  But all those splashy and exciting decorations mask the ugly side of giftwrap.

 Gross Eco-Friendly Giftwrap

America tosses out 85 million tons of paper products every year - and eco-friendly giftwrap, along with its accoutrements, accounts for nearly half of that waste.  The impact of giftwrap on our waste stream is especially evident during the holiday season.  From Thanksgiving to New Years Day, we generate 25 percent more waste than usual - adding up to 1 million tons of additional waste each week during that time!
eco-friendly giftwrap environmental impact isn't just found in landfills.  Like most paper products, giftwrap adversely affects the environment from production to disposal.  On the production end, there's the consumption of virgin forest ecosystems, including trees as well as water and fuel resources.  Then it goes through the production process to make it into paper suitable for eco-friendly giftwrap, bleaching comes first, then dyeing and adding in the extras touches, like sparkly designs, before finally being shipped to stores across the country, using even more fuel to do so.  Only to be tossed out in the trash!
The bleaching process produces dioxin, a toxic pollutant that can enter nearby waterways and terrestrial ecosystems.  While there is little agreement on the danger of dioxin to humans, the USEPA does advocate using a less-toxic chlorine dioxide compound in bleaching rather than the most commonly used chlorine gas.  This has led to alternative bleaching procedures, implemented by about 80 percent of domestic paper manufacturers, in an attempt to limit the amount of dioxin byproducts that are emitted.

 Trash the Eco-Friendly Giftwrap

Trashing it is sometimes your only option. eco-friendly giftwrap is not accepted as a recyclable in all locations so you've got waste and heavy resource use from cradle to grave.  Different waste management companies have different ways of dealing with eco-friendly giftwrap.  Some companies may accept it year-round as part of its recycling program.  Others may accept it only at certains times of the year and still others may not accept it at all.  The problem with recycling giftwrap lies in its high clay and ink content.  All those chemicals can contaminate the other recyclables, thereby rendering the recycled product unusable.

 Sustainable Eco-Friendly Giftwrap  Options

Oh, how traditions linger!  Recent surveys indicate that although most people view eco-friendly giftwrap as incredibly wasteful, they are loathe to give it up entirely.  It seems the tradition of wrapping gifts trumps our ecological concerns.  
But, a green lining is emerging.  Recyclable kraft paper and bags and reusable gift bags are gaining in popularity.  Even a small decrease in the use of traditional wraps would be highly eco-beneficial, if every family in the US used reusable materials on just three gifts, we'd save enough paper to cover 45,000 football fields.