Since we last checked in, I’ve been making a dollhouse to give my daughter for Christmas. I didn’t take on the project for environmental reasons, but I do feel pretty good about that aspect of it. I’m careful with my paint and glue choice, and I made sure the plywood doesn’t contain formaldehyde, sworn enemy of both air and water. (Most doesn’t, but look for “NAF” or “TSCA Title VI” compliant stuff.)
But I’m not messing around with the tiny tables and people and chairs and appliances that go inside the house. We bought that stuff online. It was shipped to our home from a warehouse that in turn received it from a factory that was probably powered by a fossil-fuel-fired electric grid that…
It’s overwhelming to dwell on every way in which you’re potentially harming the planet. You start doing the guilt-math; then the paralysis of despair sets in. You shut down and start thinking about something else. We aren’t going to save the world by obsessing over our imperfect behaviors, because focusing on how you’re repeatedly failing at something is a great way to succeed at quitting it. Instead, always be on the lookout for little wins. That stuff adds up.
So let’s talk about wrapping presents—no Grinches allowed. Fact: You are going to buy gifts. Fact: You are going to wrap them. Fact: We can do better than we did last year and feel good about that. How? We’re gonna excommunicate tape.
The problem with plastic tape
I was wrapping something, used the last bit of tape, and idly wondered how much had been on the spool. 650 inches. That’s 54 feet of ¾-inch-wide plastic, enough to encircle a full-size pickup. How much had I used on the gift? 10 inches. It wasn’t even a big box.
Tape seems like such a stupid little thing to worry about—especially when it’s on the outside of something with a much heftier environmental bar tab. But that insignificance makes it all the easier to eliminate. Nobody cares about tape. You’re not ruining any memories by using less of the stuff. When on the hunt for easy ways to take plastic out of circulation, tape is an easy mark.
So how much holiday gift tape are we talking about? That’s a borderline impossible question, but here’s a swing: Based on some BLS data, a lifetime of Christmases, and an all-but-useless Twitter poll, I’m estimating 5.5 gifts (mean) per American this holiday. The math on this is sketchy, but it’s good enough for rhetorical purposes:
5.5 gifts per person * 329,500,000 people in the United States = 1,812,250,000 gifts
Multiply that by 10 inches of tape per present, divide by 12 to get feet, keep going with the math stuff… 5,280… and we’re at 286,024 miles. You could stick one end to a rocket, grab the other end, and almost make it around the planet twice while your ship flies to the moon. That’s a lot of tape, even if the assumptions are wildly off.
Maybe it’s more relatable to think about weight: Scotch tape weighs about 0.029 grams per inch. Which means our space-bound strand amounts to 579 tons of plastic. All that plastic pollution stemming from something that nobody gives a crap about.
Even if everyone just reduced their tape use by 20%—2 inches per package—that would keep 115 tons of plastic from ending up in landfills. Which is where it goes. The glue on the back of your tape makes it very difficult to recycle. There is biodegradable cellulose tape, but, Scotch dominates.
Do you need tape to wrap presents? Of course not. Brown paper packages tied up with string, right? People wrapped presents long before 3M came along. So I reached out to Brian Moylan, professional gift wrapper (and author and podcast host), to learn how.
Which is how we got the following video:
How to wrap presents without tape
Give it a try! And while you’re in the mindset, here are a few other simple ways to be easier on the environment without crashing your sleigh.
Choose the right wrapping paper
Everybody loves a blinged-out and repeating Rudolph motif, but the more adorned your paper is, the harder it is to recycle. Glitter- and foil-emblazoned wrap tends to get yanked off of recycling plant conveyor belts. Paper plants don’t want to see a single sparkly red nose, because it messes with their manufacturing process. Fortunately, Popular Science has a guide to the best recyclable—and even compostable—wrapping papers.
You might also consider reusing an old newspaper or magazine (if you still read printed things). Brown paper bags work well, too.
Gift bags keep on giving
You don’t tear open a gift bag, so why not reuse it. Especially if you’ve got a holiday themed one, nobody’s going to see it again for a year. Unless the recipient wants it, just take the thing back. Maybe put hashmarks on the bottom and see how many times you can trot that thing out.
Japanese wrapping cloths
When I lived in Japan, people used to wrap everything in swaths of textile called furoshiki. Lunch boxes, books, pens, whatever. Presents were another common use. Typically you give the cloth back after you open your gift, but sometimes the furoshiki is part of the package. Apparently, that practice is still popular.
Being Japan, there are all sorts of cool techniques to make your holiday understory look just as festive as if you were littering it with paper-wrapped boxes.
—
I’m sure you all have a million other tricks, and I’d love to hear about them. Feel free to leave them in the comments or email me. Or hit us up on Twitter or Instagram. TikTok coming soon, too. As always, thanks so much for taking the time to read this. If you have questions or just want to say hi, please hit me up. And in case you’re feeling generous: all I want for Christmas is for you to share this email with others who might be interested in saving the world.
Take care of yourselves—and the rest of us, too.
Joe Brown
joe@one5c.com
*one5c is a reference to the goal of limiting Global Warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.