Ways to be green with gift wrapping
By Sharon Harvey-Rosenberg, McClatchy Newspapers
Scissors and clear tape transformed a store bag into festive wrapping paper for a gift. That green use of an old bag solved an annual challenge of finding affordable wrapping paper. The sale of traditional gift paper is a profitable business, creating annual revenues of $2.6 billion dollars, according to Earth911, an environmental services company.
Alternative gift-wrapping ideas can save money and reduce landfill waste. If every American family replaced traditional gift wrapping paper with fabric or recycled paper for three gifts, the amount of paper saved would be enough to cover more than 45,000 football fields, according to the Sierra Club.
