Cathy Isom fills you in on what to do with all of that leftover Christmas paper. What you can and can’t recycle. That’s coming up on This Land of Ours.
Some waste management services will accept wrapping paper in household recycling collection bins but others will not, so it’s important check first. Others ask for wrapping paper to be taken to a local recycling center. However, some do not collect wrapping paper at all because wrapping paper is not accepted by some recycled paper mills.
There are a number of reasons for this. For example, wrapping paper is often dyed, laminated and/or contains non-paper additives such as gold and silver coloured shapes, glitter, plastics etc which cannot be recycled. Some wrapping paper is very thin and contains few good quality fibers for recycling. A lot of wrapping paper has sticky tape attached to it which makes it very difficult to recycle.
Remove any sticky tape and decorations such as ribbons and bows as these cannot be recycled.
Wrapping paper can only be recycled if it passes the scrunch test – simple paper wrap can be recycled but foil or glitter-decorated paper cannot and needs to go in the general waste bin.
I’m Cathy Isom…