Garbage bags full of discarded gift wrap, packaging and disposable place settings line the alleys on Boxing Day, and recycling depots fill with boxes and wrapping paper.

Most of us try to curb this glutton of waste, but it can be difficult, especially when wrapping gifts in newspaper doesn’t have quite the glitter of a lovely foil wrapping paper with a big shiny bow. Luckily, there are other options out there, and they can be friendly to your wallet, the eye and the earth.

Carrie Fanai is one Alberta entrepreneur who is working to make “green Christmas” beautiful. Her company, XOcards, has recently launched an eco-friendly line called Eco XO. The line features organic cotton gift bags and napkins, cards made from recycled paper (some 100 per cent post-consumer depending on availability) and reusable place settings for holiday gatherings.

“The organic cotton gift bags reduce waste because they’re washable and reusable,” says Fanai. “You can keep them in the family or give them to friends, and they stand up better than the disposable bags.”

Any cloth gift bag will be better for the environment than paper or plastic wrapping, but if you’re buying the bags new, the organic cotton bags have the added benefit of being grown without all the harmful chemicals that normally go into cotton production, as well as a host of other environmental advantages that are built into the growing, harvesting and manufacturing of the fibres.

Fanai feels that offering the gift wrap complements XOcards’ primary product—greeting cards. The bags come in four  sizes and four patterns and are available on the XOcards website, http://www.xocards.ca

Another beautiful idea that is making a comeback is a traditional Japanese method of wrapping slowly, but surely. It is called furoshiki. Depending on who you talk to, it’s pronounced either f’-rosh-kee or fu-roh-shee-kee and it involves folding, twisting and tying a piece of fabric around a gift in one of many ways to create a beautiful package. 

In furoshiki wrapping, there are specific ties for books, wine bottles, and gifts of all shapes and sizes. The results rival any high quality wrapping paper and, of course, the fabric is reused for other gifts. 

Susan Fletcher is the owner and founder of Alderspring Design in Gibson, B.C., which creates furoshiki pattern cards for sale in fabric stores. Her new website, http://www.furoshikithefuturegreen.com, features photos and the history of furoshiki, plus do-it-yourself folding patterns and a blog about living without disposables.

“I love the idea of reusable wrappings,” she says. “For some years, I have used tea towels to wrap gifts at Christmas, so I took to furoshiki like a duck to water when I came across it.”

Fletcher promises the more you do it, the better you become at twisting and tying the fabric to create an attractive presentation. “It’s addictive,” she says.

But furoshiki and other reusable gift wraps have more going for them than just reducing waste, says Fletcher. “When you wrap a gift in paper, it gets discarded. That’s it. But when you wrap a gift in a beautiful piece of cloth, say at Christmas, chances are good that the recipient will wrap a gift in it the next year and you have the beginning of a shared family memory.” 

She adds that the tradition can mean families will start looking forward to seeing that familiar cloth package under the tree, “and they will tell stories to each other about previous years and the gifts it wrapped. So it’s not just because it saves money, and it’s not just because it’s better for the environment that we should learn to make furoshikis—it’s because it’s also good for building memories.”

Wrapping gifts within a gift is a suggestion echoed by experts across the board: Michael Kalmanovitch, owner of Earth’s General Store in Edmonton; Riva Mackie, owner of Riva’s - The Eco Store in Calgary; and Lauren Maris, author of Live Green, Calgary! all recommend wrapping gifts in useable cloth items such as tea towels or placemats. “It’s like a bonus gift in itself,” says Maris.

In place of plastic ribbon that deteriorates quickly, Kalmanovitch recommends twine or yarn. “It may be synthetic,” he says, “but it can be reused.”

Mackie suggests going all natural with a hemp string with added foliage to make it pretty. 

A unique ribbon replacement idea comes from Simply Green Wrapping by Danny Seo (available at your local library). It turns out that all those old VHS tapes (if you have already gotten rid of yours, check at thrift stores) can have some use—pull out the tape from the reels and it makes a perfect black, shiny ribbon that curls like the real thing.

All of these can be tied over fabric or unique boxes, tins and other containers that proliferate in thrift shops. One truly unique idea that surely would not see any Christmas-morning copycats under the tree is another from Seo’s book: cut an old globe in half along the equator and use each half as a bowl to hold the contents of a gift basket. Wrap in cellophane (which, by the way, is compostable), and top with one of those ribbon options we just talked about.

For families that want to make eco-friendly Christmas wrapping a household project, the Glenbow Museum in Calgary is hosting an Environmental Paper Wrapping Workshop in their Morris Shumiatcher Activity Room from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on December 7. Participants will reuse newspaper, maps and paper bags to create festive wrapping paper. Maris will be present to discuss further ways to “green your holidays.”