Sustainable Holiday Wrapping

Florida Crystals is focused on sustainability all year, every year. We grow organic sugarcane and operate zero-waste mills using 100% renewable energy. Owls like me even gobble up pests the natural way so we don’t need pesticides! Now, because of our commitment to sustainability, we’ve compiled helpful tips so you can lend a wing, er, hand in helping the planet by wrapping your fresh-baked holiday presents using eco-friendly materials and techniques!

Eco-Friendly Food Wrapping The Florida Crystals Way

When it comes to wrapping food-focused presents this holiday

season, there’s no reason to choose between what looks good and what’s great for the environment. So go ahead and give tasty treats to those you love, but instead of just grabbing rolls of red and green paper, follow these simple tips to keep your holiday truly green. Happy Hoo-lidays!

First things first—keep freshness in mind

Creativity knows no bounds when making presents pretty sustainably, but when those gifts contain perishable items it’s critical to keep an eye on preservation too.

Drier baked goods like crunchy cookies, scones or brittles are fairly shipping-friendly, so simply pack them tightly and seal them securely. Separate and label your flavors as well, or your Key Lime cookies may end up with peanut butter notes you didn’t intend.

For moister items that aren’t quite as packing-ready, like muffins or pound cakes, we suggest freezing them before shipping. This not only helps to make them harder and more durable temporarily, but keeps things cooler which can lower the chance of spoilage.

And no matter what you’re baking and packing, with food— presentation is everything, so follow the rest of our chic and sustainable wrapping tips to make sure your food arrives looking as good as it tastes.

Turn upcycling into an upgrade

Throughout the year, we all end up with packing materials from various purchases, projects and errands. To reduce waste, keep packing boxes from online shipments for those bigger gifts you plan to give and hold onto the tissue paper from inside your new box of shoes to pad any presents that need a bit more protection. Both are better than buying newly minted wrapping materials that require additional trees and processing to produce. Even better, a package boxed and wrapped with repurposed materials can carefully contain a delight like our Flourless Chocolate Cake and still look fabulous when tied with some compostable twine and given a rustic-yet-festive look.

Fold in a bit of fabric

Your quest for wrapping and packing materials need not end with paper alone. Fabric can be purchased inexpensively at arts & crafts stores or, even better, repurposed from items donated to thrift stores. From a funky, retro dress to a sophisticated scarf, color and pattern options are endless. You can also slice strips of things like drapes or tablecloths into decorative ribbons and bows. Consider using thin strips of brown fabric to stand in as a creative twist (literally) on baker’s twine when packaging our unique Hazelnut Pistachio Chocolate Salami or wrapping the entire “salami” in a stiff white canvas to represent deli paper, keeping with the theme in a sustainable way. The possibilities are endless, so, whether you’re sending a store-bought present or a homemade one, think about surrounding your gifts with a little bit of style this season and making fabric your choice for festivity this holiday season. Mother Nature and all her friends, like me, will thank you.

Seal with sustainable tape

Using plastic tape makes your holiday presents less eco-friendly and harder for processing centers to recycle later. (Plus, they can get inadvertently stuck to wildlife—Ask me how I know.) So, instead, reach for rolls of biodegradable paper tape. Sometimes called “washi tape,” it’s available in a wide variety of fun patterns, some of which even include biodegradable glitter for some extra sparkle that will help you elevate your holidays this year.

Make wrapping a piece of cake

What’s one of the easiest ways to make wrapping more sustainable and simpler as well? Don’t wrap at all! Instead, you can easily package a gift like our Hazelnut Crumble Cake in a sheet of compostable cellophane and slip it into a reusable bag that becomes part of the gift and something else for the recipient to enjoy. Another option is to hold onto the bags you receive from stores, farmers’ markets and the like throughout the year and use those. Combined with a little creativity and some of that upcycled tissue paper we talked about earlier, you’ll have a showstopper of a sustainable present that’s a gift for your loved one and a gift for the planet.

There you have it, a plethora of tasteful, time-tested ways to take sustainability to the next level this holiday season. For even more advice from me and my friends, peruse our Zero Waste Christmas Decorations and Gift Ideas article too. Together, we can make this our most Earth-friendly Christmas yet.