Sometimes Santa gets carried away with the glitzy packaging! After he's dazzled on Christmas morning, the best we can do is to save most of his non-recycleable, glittery papers and bows to use another year. Long before anyone talked about recycling, my mother taught me to carefully fold the paper to minimize creases and salvage it to use again. If you want to literally recycling your wrapping paper, you might want to check its content and whether your local recycler will accept it. We've put all of the packaging we can into our recycle bin, but we also save a box of gently used paper and bows. And yes, there are beautiful alternatives like reusable fabric gift bags, baskets and plain brown paper that can be decorated.
As we wrap up the year, here are a few more ways to consider recycling: