My mum is very creative, and a lot of my Christmas memories are of things she’d made. The beauty of hand-made decorations is that everyone can get involved in making them, and so they create a family tradition. It’s something we try to carry on, with often differing levels of success!

Christmas is one day of the year when we go overboard and buy presents galore, overeat, and revel in the twinkling lights. This year will be very different for many of us as the cost-of-living crisis continues to bite. The environmental crisis that’s dominated our headlines in recent years continues as we all feel the impact of freak weather conditions. The efforts we’ve put in place are starting to make a difference, but there’s still so much more we can do.

Eco-friendly Christmas decorations

Creating your own Christmas decorations, table dressings, and wrapping doesn’t have to be expensive. Or difficult. Reusing last year’s gift bags and boxes is a good place to start when it comes to wrapping or using pieces of Christmas fabric that can be reused year after year. Cut up old Christmas cards to make gift tags rather than buying new ones.

Creating paper decorations that can be recycled once they’re past their best is a fun way of using up odd bits of paper and is something the kids can get involved with too. As is using foliage that’s fallen off trees and bushes to create wonderful table centrepieces. A Christmas forage in the woods is a great outdoor activity the whole family can get involved.

Christmas crackers

Christmas crackers are a key part of most tables and first became a British tradition in the mid-1800s. They were developed by Tom Smith, the early ones were inspired by the French bonbon sweets with a riddle added in. Tom’s sons added a paper crown and modern crackers include a gift too which can cost anything from a few pence to over a thousand pounds.

Shop-bought crackers are one-minute wonders. Once they’re pulled, the joke read out, the hat either torn or put on, and the gift cast aside, they’re destined for the bin. Whilst some of the contents can be recycled, it’s estimated that over 40 million end up in the bin each year.

So, what’s the alternative?

Reusable fabric crackers are an eco-friendly, zero-waste alternative to the traditional Christmas cracker. They create beautiful table decorations and can be filled with environmentally friendly alternatives to the plastic gifts that the cheap shop-bought ones usually contain.

Eco-friendly Christmas crackers

You can make your own Christmas crackers using fabric, ribbon or string, toilet roll tubes and small gifts. You could cut up Christmas clothes that are too small for the kids as the fabric, or buy end-of-line pieces that would otherwise end up in a landfill.

Handmade crackers make a beautiful addition to your Christmas table that doesn’t cost the earth, either literally or figuratively in terms of money. One set of Christmas crackers will last a lifetime if they’re well looked after. They can become a family tradition that’s passed down through the family.

You can dress them up as much as you want using odd bits of ribbon or off-cuts of sparkly fabric. Or keep them plain and simple and tie them with string. You can get the kids to write the jokes and add a thoughtful little gift like a homemade sweet or a lottery ticket. The possibilities are endless.

They don’t leave any mess and can be used as many times as you want over the Christmas period. And then you just carefully pack them away with the rest of the decorations, to be used again next year.

Eco-friendly gift-wrapping

End-of-line fabric also makes a great alternative to wrapping presents with paper. A lot of wrapping paper contains glitter, which makes it difficult to recycle so fabric makes a brilliant alternative that can be used again and again. And it takes a few minutes to fold them up and put them away for next year.

Use anything from string to odd bits of ribbon to secure the gift, and add a sprinkle of foliage from your garden or picked up on a winter walk, to make each one unique.

If you’re a dab hand with the sewing machine, you could make fabric gift bags too.

We’ve been using fabric wrapping for years. I was worried that the kids wouldn’t like it, but it’s made no difference to the level of excitement on Christmas morning. And it cuts down SO much on the mess levels.

Head to the eco-friendly section for more simple changes you can make that have a big impact on the environment.

The history of gift wrapping

Early use of wrapping paper has been traced back to ancient China in around the 2nd century BC when monetary gifts were wrapped with paper. The wrapped gifts were handed out by the Chinese court to government officials.

Fast forward many centuries, and two American brothers Rollie and Joyce Hall started to sell tissue paper for the holiday season. The brothers who founded Hallmark, are credited as being the founders of the modern-day gifting wrapping industry in 1917.

The industry has moved on a lot since the early days. Now, glitter-encrusted and shiny paper are popular choices to wrap the gifts we place under our Christmas tree. These types of paper are not recyclable. It’s estimated that UK consumers use around 227,000 miles of wrapping paper each year, and of that, approximately 108 million rolls of wrapping paper will end up in the bin and ultimately land-fill.

Waste

If we were to recycle all wrapping paper waste, according to allthingssupplychain.com it could use 70% less energy than making new paper from scratch. Recycling just one ton of paper, saves 17 trees, 18.7 square feet of landfill space, and 4,000 kilowatts of electricity. That’s a massive energy saving.

So, why don’t we recycle more? And what is a more sustainable option so that the gift recipient still gets to enjoy the thrill of unwrapping?

Firstly, not all wrapping paper can be recycled. Glittery, glossy paper is the worst culprit. It may look beautiful, but it will end up in landfill because of what it’s made from. The rule of thumb to find out if paper is recyclable is to scrunch it up. If it stays in a ball, it can be recycled. Gift wrapping is often fastened with plastic tape and finished off with plastic ribbon. All of these may look great but have a negative impact on the environment.

Eco-friendly gift wrapping

The more eco-friendly option is to use something that can be used next year. And the year after, and for many years to come. You can get really creative with this.

Home-made biscuits and sweets would look fabulous in glass jars. They can be used time and time again, not just for wrapping gifts, but for everyday storage too so they’re a great idea. The jars could then be wrapped in old newspapers which has a low environmental impact. Old maps make great wrapping paper too, so if you’ve got a stash of them in the loft, get them out.

If they’re for Christmas presents, add some pine cones found on a winter walk, with some cinnamon sticks secured with an old piece of string to create a beautiful festive feel.

If you’ve got kids, get them to decorate good old brown paper bags with pens or a rubber stamp to create unique and recyclable gift wrapping. As it’s made by the kids, it’s also part of the gift.

The wrapping has a personal touch with lots of great patterns which will also help to teach kids about creating a more sustainable Christmas. Using washi tape rather than traditional sticky tape is also a simple way to cut down on single-use plastics.

Reusable fabric wrapping

The reusable options we love in our house, are fabric gift wrap and reusable gift bags. They’re a no-brainer. The first Christmas we used them, I was worried the kids would feel they’d missed out on ripping the paper off. But I needn’t have worried because they loved it.

I used some beautiful ribbon I’d saved from gifts and packaging I’d received throughout the year to fasten the fabric sheets so it was sustainable gift wrapping. And it was so quick and easy to put several smaller gifts into fabric gift bags which are zero waste and best of all, absolutely no mess!

It took seconds to round up the bags and wrapping sheets once the presents were opened. I folded them up and put them with the rest of my gift-wrapping supplies, ready for the next year.

We don’t just use reusable gift wrapping for Christmas. We’ve got bags and wrapping sheets made from end-of-line fabrics that we use for the rest of the year to wrap birthday presents too. The possibilities for eco-friendly gift wrapping really are endless and will give the gift receiver just as much, if not more joy, than ripping open a gift wrapped in paper that won’t end up in the recycling bin.

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Every minute, one million plastic bottles are purchased worldwide. More often than not, they’re used once and then thrown away. This type of single-use plastic isn’t biodegradable. That means it has to be disposed of in some way. Between the 1970s and 1990s, plastic production and therefore waste generation, more than tripled. It was at a higher level in the early 2000s than it was for the whole of the previous 40 years.

Those figures are terrifying. Particularly when they’re looked at in relation to how the waste they create is disposed of. It can take over 500 years for plastic to degrade, therefore it is usually disposed of in some way. Millions of tonnes of plastic waste are shipped to destinations where it is then burned or dumped. About 79% of all plastic waste ends up in landfills or the ocean with only 9% being recycled.

Of the waste that ends up in our oceans, a lot of it is transported there by the rivers that feed them. It’s estimated that almost 80% of the plastic emissions into the oceans, come from around 1000 rivers.

Plastic pollution in our Oceans

Plastic waste gradually breaks down into smaller and smaller pieces which humans and animals ingest. But it’s in our oceans where this has the biggest impact. 100 million marine animals die each year as a result of plastic waste. Around 100,000 died as a result of getting tangled in larger pieces.

It’s estimated there are 5.25 trillion pieces of plastic waste in our oceans. Some of those pieces float but the vast majority are found beneath the surface. Marine creatures mistake these small pieces for food and so eat them. But because they are ingestible, they are responsible for so many sea creatures dying.

So, finding ways to stop using single-use plastic items such as drink bottles, bags, and wipes, has to be a priority for everyone. Most of us now take our bags to the supermarket, which we reuse repeatedly. Similarly, many of us use a refillable cup or bottle which cuts down on the volume going to landfill.

With a bit of preparation and thought, it can be just as easy to replace things like single-use wipes. These often contain plastic and create a large proportion of the waste in landfills. It’s estimated that we bin around 11 billion wet wipes every year. That’s a lot of wipes.

Reusable wipes

Switching to reusable wipes has a massive impact on the amount of waste households create, particularly those with small children. Fabric wipes are easy to use, washable, and cheaper to buy in the long run.

There is a range of retailers who sell reusable wipes from well-known brands such as Cheeky Wipes to small independent shops like CG Beeswax Wipes or Sprout Organic.

The beauty of reusable wipes, apart from the fact that they’re kinder to the environment, is that they can be sued for anything from makeup removal to cleaning up spills and keeping your baby clean. They’re also kinder to the skin and because they’re washable, you won’t run out.

Making small changes to some of the ways we do things, or the products we buy so that they are kinder to the environment, is easier than you think. It just takes a bit of planning and researching the best options so that your purchases are more eco-friendly.

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Hygiene and personal care accounts for 44% of their use across Europe, with only 3% coming from surgical or medical use (source: Friends of the Earth).

One of the major US manufacturers of wipes produces 125 billion a year. That’s enough to stretch to the moon and back 24 times. It’s estimated we use around 11 billion in the UK each year.

Convenience

Single-use wipes are a quick and convenient way to clean. Once they’ve been used, we throw them in the bin or flush them down the loo and don’t give them a second thought. But what happens after we’ve got rid of them?

If wipes are flushed down the loo, they end up in the sewerage system and then they can find their way onto beaches and into our oceans. If they’re put in the bin, they end up in landfill sites. It’s thought it can take 500 years for most wipes to biodegrade.

According to the Marine Conservation Society, an average of 18 wet wipes were found for every 100 metres of coastline they cleaned and surveyed. This made them the third most common litter item on UK beaches in 2020.

Harmful to marine life

When wipes find their way into our oceans, it causes problems for marine life. Bigger chunks of wipes are a choking hazard to wildlife. Then, as they break down into smaller pieces, they spread into waterways and become entangled in the marine environment. Marine animals then ingest them as they feed making them ill which can ultimately kill them.

Friends of the Earth reported that wet wipes are the major cause of fatbergs in sewers across the world. These are formed from wipes that stick to grease and other gunk to form the masses. They block sewers and are difficult to get rid of.

Wipes were the main cause (90%) of sewer blockages investigated by Water UK in 2017. River cleaning teams found that hundreds of thousands had formed into a new riverbed in the Thames from wipes flushed down toilets in London.

So, what’s the solution?

Reusable wipes

Switching to reusable wipes, even for a few days a week, has a huge positive impact on the volume of waste being pumped into our oceans and dumped in landfill sites. They can be used for everything you’d use a single wipe for such as cleaning your baby or removing make-up.

There is a range of places that sell reusable fabric wipes such as Eco-Us UK and Cheeky Wipes.

You can use the wipes on their own and wet them each time. Or, have some pre-prepared in a container. Simply add several wipes to the box, some water, and a couple of drops of diluted essential oil. Then you’ll have sweet-smelling wet wipes at your fingertips.

Once you’ve used them, they’re washable at up to 40 degrees so can be used time and time again. So once you’ve bought your initial wipes, they’ll soon save you money. Plus, there’s no need to worry about running out.

Save money

Using single-use wipes because they’re cheaper is a false economy. Take wet wipes for example. A box of 12, 52 wipe packets costs around £10. If you’ve got a young baby, you can easily get through a packet every couple of days. So, on average, that’s probably a box of 12 every 3 or 4 weeks.

Reusable wipes start at around £12 for 10. So, if you bought three packets to make sure you’ve got enough spares, that’s £36.

Over a year, if you bought a box of single-use wipes a month, you’re spending £120. If you bought 30 reusable wipes, it’s £36. That’s quite a saving. And it’s not just the impact it has on your finances. The impact of changing to reusable wipes for the environment is huge.

If you enjoyed reading this article, why not buy me a coffee to help keep the magazine free for everyone to read? If you’d like to read more articles about adoption, health and well-being, and parenting, head over to the home page and have a look at what’s new.