Go Green with Ten Alternative Gift Wrap Ideas for Christmas

Save the Environment and Spruce Up Your Packages!

Go Green! It's one of the biggest themes out there this holiday season. You can buy gifts that don't harm the environment, car pool and use less of our natural resources (i.e., gas), or plant a tree as a gift for Christmas. Or, you could at least wrap the gift you buy in something that's pro-environment, like alternative wrapping papers!

So what are some 'go green!' wrapping paper ideas?

1. Newspaper. This is the easiest, and least creative, way to go green. Use newspaper that is printed on recycled paper. Of course, you may not get any bonus points here for your wrapping sense of style, and if Stacy London of the new TLC show "Fashionably Late" ever got hold of your wrapping paper, you would definitely have to face the wrath! Perhaps you could try to add some flair and use some environmentally friendly crayons to color in the newspaper, and just use the funnies section.

2. Recycled tissue paper. Most of the tissue paper out there is not going to be recycled, but you can find recycled tissue paper if you try. It serves just as good a purpose as the regular paper that reduced our tree stock by another percentage point.

3. Fruit rollups. Okay, this one is crazy, and you would have to use it on a small gift. I would suggest something like jewelry that will already be in a recycled cardboard box. This is the edible alternative, so technically you can eat this gift wrap once you take it off the gift. (Okay, I had to throw one in there like this.)

4. Old clothes. Wow, I'll bet you never thought of this. If you've got an old tshirt you will never find use for again, get one last use out of it by using it to wrap a gift. This could get incredibly creative, because you could use different textures of fabric, like an old suede or cuorduroy jacket.

5. Jeans. Jeans are the ultimate gift wrap! Cool thing is you can put the card in one of the pockets once you cut the jeans to make them fit the gift. It seems that jeans are being made into all sorts of things anymore, like stylish purses for example.