I try to be "green" but sometimes it's just the unintentional result of being cheap and lazy. That's especially true at this time of year. With the holidays comes lots of gift-wrapping, if the store doesn't do it for me gratis. But, in what?
I rarely have sufficient wrapping paper on hand, and what I do have are remnants from Odd Lot or fundraisers. It hardly seems worth buying decorated paper that will be torn off without so much as a glance. Ecological friends use their kids' artwork as a festive cover. Others use brown paper decorated with stencils and the like. That's too much work for me.
Nor do I carefully unwrap gifts and save the paper for reuse. Again, too much work and it requires storage (I do, however, save pretty ribbon to re-use). Also, visions of grandpa saving every piece of paper and string haunt me; I can't be like that.
I use . . . newspaper. Perhaps that's not surprising, given that I'm a journalist. And it's readily available in my home (except on Wednesdays after the recycling is collected). But I am selective. I don't pick any old page.
My thought and effort goes into the selection. For kids, I try to use comics, pictures or something amusing. For "girly" gifts, I search out haute couture ads like Chanel and Tiffany. For the artistic types, I use the arts pages. In other words, I'm not just recycling and reusing; I'm encouraging re-reading!
Whether any gift recipient actually notices the carefully chosen leafs, is debatable. My children certainly do not. As with even the fanciest covers, they care only about the inside offerings. From adults I've received neither complaints nor praise, except with respect to the actual present.
It appears that when it comes to presents, the cover is no accurate judge of the interior. In that case, let my green save green.
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