Go Green With Reusable Gift Wrap This Year!

The holidays are upon us again: a time of sharing, caring, loving, and giving. The best part is exchanging gifts! The excitement felt when we open up each colorfully wrapped mystery is amazing! It gets more and more as we open up each present to the next!

The only downside, however, is the amount of wrapping paper we have to throw out. In all the excitement and rush, we usually rip off the wrapping paper in such a way that even a few scraps left seem like a lot! The tape takes off large strips, and we manage to rip up the rest. None of that can be used again(unless you are a super-organizer who carefully and meticulously opens up each present).

The reason I was inspired to write this post is because of a great company called VZwraps that I came across while browsing online. On their website, they give a statistic from the Clean Air Council that 5,000,000 additional pounds of waste is generated in the United States during the Christmas holidays! Five million pounds over the period of say 2-3 weeks!

VZwraps strives to provide a reusable alternative to conventional wrapping paper: reusable fabric gift bags. The design is so simple it's brilliant! It's an eco-friendly recycled-cloth bag that you place your gift in, and it comes with a ribbon made of recycled materials that you tie the bunched-up top, and voila! You have a neat-looking decorated gift! The best part? It's easy to open! You will still get the thrill of ripping apart the wrapper: just pull the ribbon off with a zing!

The wraps come in different colors, shapes, and sizes, and are even themed to specific occasions like Christmas, Hanukah, birthdays, and more.

The only thing is that the wraps need to be re-circulated again by the person who receives the gift to really get their full eco-friendliness. Of course, when it's a group of friends or family that exchanges the gifts between each other, the wraps can just be packed away and stored for the next occasion.

I think that just the wrap itself would also be a neat idea for a gift! How often do you receive something as cool and unique as that?

What's the most unique packaging that you have ever received a gift in?

Rise Above Plastics Video

Plastics have a really nasty effect on our oceans - we don't usually see this because we rarely go out into the ocean as such. I suppose if we were to ask a fisherman or a sailor, they would be better informed. The Surfrider Foundation has started a "Rise Above Plastics" program, which I found really moving. I will write more about it in future posts, but today, I'd like to share a video I found particularly riveting:

As always, shares and comments are appreciated!

The Extra Push To Go Reusable

The basics of economic theory say that humans have unlimited wants and humans react to incentives. An incentive is basically a reason for someone to do something. For example, to get a child to work diligently, the teacher may put up stars on the board for good work. The star on the board is the child's incentive to work hard. Similarly, a negative incentive is when a teacher gives detention for poor conduct. The prospect of getting detention is a child's incentive to not misbehave.

Many prolific economists(chiefly the authors of Freakonomics - Stephen Dubner and Steven Levitt) are big believers in incentives and their effects, and that is one of the main points in their books. They argue that many times, incentives would be more effective than laws at curbing or promoting certain behaviors.

Many governments have combined incentives and laws with good results. In Toronto, Canada, for example, waste has to be split up into food waste, recyclable waste, and other waste. If there is any mistake in sorting, there is a fine. Also, trash is only collected once a week - this creates the incentive to produce less trash, since you would have to keep the extra bags in your home or garage.

Similarly, to reduce the usage of plastic baggies and promote the usage of reusable sandwich bags, there needs to be an incentive. Schools, for example, can have clubs and societies where members using reusable sandwich bags would get a small percentage of extra credit to their final grade. Even local city councils and municipalities could offer some sort of benefit or bonus to people who recycle and reduce waste with diligence.

This is the theory behind ReusableBagStore.com's Referral program. It is a referral program that offers two incentives: one to the potential buyer going reusable to buy with a discount on the purchase, and second to the referrer to refer as many people as possible, since they get rewards according to how many people they send our way.

Some stores also offer programs where the customer receives $5 in store credit to that very store. ReusableBagStore.com decided to break the mold, be bold, and offer a gift card to any store that the customer likes!

Incentives will always remain powerful motivators for people to do things. Eco friendly and green companies can really take advantage of this to create greater awareness and excitement about their products and services.

Benefits of Reusable Sandwich Bags vs Plastic Baggies

Plastic is a very complex thing. It is also very fitting that the adjective used to describe people with an air of "fakeness" as plastic. This is because in it's essence, plastic is very fake and manmade.

Plastic is a by-product of oil. Yes, this is the same oil that is used to purify the gasoline that powers our cars, airplanes, and power plants. The same toxic, noxious substance that is so familiar to all of us is from the same family as the substance we use to pack our food and drink!

Unlike oil, however, which takes millions of years to form but little to no time to vaporize and disseminate, plastic takes both millions of years to form and millions of years to decompose. This is because plastic is what is called in chemistry as a polymer. A polymer is a long chain of molecules strung together, and held together by incredibly strong bonds which are very hard to break. This is why plastic is such a durable and versatile material.

While plastic has its many uses, food packaging is one area where it is used a little too liberally. In fact, there have been studies linking heating food in plastic packaging and a carcinogenic effect.

So, when our food is packed in a plastic baggie, it comes into contact with the same materials used to make gasoline and diesel! Plastic is also full of nasty chemicals like BPA(Bisphenol-A) and Phthalates(refer to the glossary section) which have harmful long-term effects.

These harmful effects are just those that immediately affect our body. The damage that plastic does to the environment is manifold. While most natural materials like food waste, paper, and similar items decompose fast(that is, they are easily digested by microbes and bacteria and broken down into smaller particles), plastic is virtually indigestible - pun intended! It is estimated that families in the United States alone dispose of upwards of 200 millions of tons of plastic waste every day! A good amount of that is contributed to by plastic baggies!

By using Reusable Sandwich Bags (brands like LunchSkins and EcoDitty are great examples) that are made from food-safe fabric and cotton, not only is our food touching safer, natural materials, since fabric and cotton are grown naturally rather than manufactured chemically, but reusable sandwich bags are washable, so you can use them again and again. They will be like new every single time! And they also won't add non-biodegradable and decomposable materials to our already clogged-up landfills.