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From gifts to gift-wrap to decorations, there are a lot of ways to show festive spirit this time of year. Natural materials are a great way to decorate without buying anything new, and repurposing things that would have gone to the trash can add even more zero-waste sparkle to your home. The NOAA Marine Debris Program blog has featured a number of great ideas to reduce waste this season, including decorations and gift-giving ideas:
- Creative Ways to Reduce Waste this Holiday Season
- Guide to a Greener Holiday - Zero Waste Holiday Parties and Decorations
- Guide to a Greener Holiday - Zero Waste Gifts and Gift Wrapping
Our featured activity in this issue is a festive way to repurpose hard-to-recycle materials into holiday decorations for your home or classroom!
If you're a person like me who loves their salty snacks, it can be pretty frustrating to wind up with a non-recyclable bag at the end of a movie marathon or get-together. Food wrappers like snack bags are one of the biggest sources of marine debris, even beating out cigarette butts in recent International Coastal Cleanups! With this easy craft, you can give a new life to that bag and make it a part of your holiday decorations.
Supplies:
- Snack bags
- Scissors
- Tape or twist ties
- String
Steps:
- Rinse out your bag with soapy water and let dry. Then lay it out flat, cutting off the bottom seam.
- Cut the bag open along the vertical seam, spreading it out.
- Cut the bag into rectangles. Different sized pieces will give you different lengths for your tassels (which you can see in the example photo below).
- Fold the smaller pieces in half and cut from the edge, stopping an inch or so before the fold.
- Unfold your piece and flip it so that the printed side faces up. Roll up your tassel, so that there are two sides of fringe.
- Twist from the center of your tassel (the part that is un-cut) and fold in half. Using tape or twist ties, secure the top, ideally creating a small loop.
Using string, create a garland with your tassels to decorate with!
Depending on how many bags you have or how much tinsel you'd like to create, you can experiment with lots of different fringe lengths, widths, and even colors.
Plus, if you're looking for more fun ways to repurpose materials to make your holiday decorations, try using the cardboard rolls from paper towels or wrapping paper to make snowflakes!
