I love presents – giving them and getting them. But it can be a wasteful business. In peak gift-giving season in Australia – Christmas – the amount of waste we produce goes up 30 per cent .

If you think about it, it’s kind of weird that we give a person a gift, along with a piece of rubbish to deal with. According to the CSIRO Australians use more than 150,000 km of wrapping paper during the festive season- nearly enough paper to wrap around Earth’s equator four times!

One way to reduce gift-related waste is to wrap your gifts in fabric. It could feel a bit weird and intimidating the first time, but it takes the same amount of time to learn as wrapping with paper, only you don’t have to find scissors and sticky tape!

Here’s a few simple ones to try:

Wrap a bottle in a napkin!

Small rectangular things like make-up, perfume, glasses, pen sets – you know – small rectangular things!

Oval and round things are easy to wrap.

Biscuits and a Scarf! Someone is lucky.

When the wrapping is part of the gift…

Make your wrapping part of the gift, with themed presents, for example:

• a cookbook wrapped in a tea towel or apron
• a bucket and spade wrapped in a beach towel
• jewellery, sunglasses or an item of clothing wrapped in a matching scarf
• a book wrapped in a library bag or tote bag.

A quick search of google, Pinterest or Youtube will yield a plethora of tutorials on wrapping with fabric. It’s not exactly a new idea; the Japanese art of furoshiki has been practiced for centuries.

If you can sew, a simple gift bag is one of the simplest things to whip up and can add a nice hand-made element to your gift.

You really don’t need special equipment or specific sizes, you just need to be willing to play around a bit until you are happy with the result. And it is well worth the effort because people are generally delighted.

 Can you think of any other ‘wrapping as part of the gift’ ideas?