7 Eco-Friendly Gift Wrapping Alternatives For Greener Giving

Most conventional wrapping paper looks festive, but it’s often made with glossy coatings, plastic film, glitter, metallic foils, and synthetic dyes. All of these embellishments typically make it unrecyclable (see more on this below). In many cases, it’s used for a few seconds, torn open, and tossed straight into landfill.

Additionally, a huge amount of wrapping paper is made from freshly cut, non-FSC-certified trees. Because it’s a single-use product, this creates a high-impact cycle of resource extraction for something that’s thrown away within seconds. Cheap inks (especially neon, metallic, or solvent-based ones) can contain heavy metals and VOCs. These inks make the paper harder to recycle or compost and contribute to pollution during manufacturing and disposal.

Is Wrapping Paper Recyclable?

Sometimes gift wrap can be recycled and sometimes it can’t. It mostly depends on not just the wrapping paper itself, but your own local recycling guidelines.

First, why is some wrapping paper not recyclable? The culprits undermining wrapping paper’s recyclability are often the shiny, glittery, or plastic-coated varieties. These elements, while enhancing aesthetics, aren’t actually paper, but are instead made of metal, plastic, and even synthetic fabrics, in the case of those pleasantly tactile velvet papers.

They may look (and feel) lovely, but the blend of materials interferes with the paper pulp’s purity, rendering it unfit for recycling facilities.

How Do You Tell If Wrapping Paper Can Be Recycled?

Aside from identifying obvious embellishments, one way to tell is to do the scrunch test. Take a piece of wrapping paper and give it a gentle scrunch. If it holds its shape like a compact little ball, you’ve hit the recycling jackpot. However, if it unfurls like a spring eager to leap back into action, it’s likely coated or contains non-paper elements—best to skip the recycling bin and redirect it towards a new destiny.

But that’s just a loose rule of thumb, let’s open things up one gift at a time and dive into what wrapping paper can be recycled and what can’t:

• Plain Wrapping Paper: If no embellishments, then generally yes.
• Foil Wrapping Paper: Generally no, the fusion of foil and paper creates a material that recycling facilities struggle to process efficiently, meaning most facilities will not accept it.
• Glossy Wrapping Paper: Tricky! Certain glossy paper types are accepted by most recycling facilities (think: flyers, postcards, and posters). Typically, the chemicals combined with paper fibers to produce these types of glossy papers are organic, such as fine clay. Concern arises when glossiness is achieved through other, unnatural additives like wax or plastic, which is commonly used in today’s wrapping. In fact, those clear colored cellophane wrapping papers are nothing BUT plastic (but still not the kind you can toss in with your recyclable plastics!). As with anything in the realm of recycling, when in doubt, leave it out.
• Tissue Wrapping Paper: If it lacks metallic or plastic adornments, it can generally be recycled.

Wrapping paper that has tape on it is generally not recyclable, and other types of wrapping paper that should never go in the compost or recycling bins include those with velvet and glitter.