How To Use Cardboard Boxes To Lower Christmas Waste

It’s November! Most people will start their Christmas shopping now, a few have already done a lot of their shopping (me), and then some will even wait until December. Regardless of where you fit into that, it’s a good time to start thinking about how you can reduce waste during the holiday season! One thing to consider is the cardboard box!

Reusing old boxes for new gifts is one of the easiest ways to reduce, reuse, and then eventually recycle. And this is the perfect time to keep it in the back of your head, because as you ramp up the shopping and more packages arrive on your doorstep, you’ll have more boxes and thus more opportunities to reuse.

So let’s first get the easy part out of the way and talk about what it is you can reuse and how. Then, I’m going to give you plenty of ideas about how you can implement this holiday reuse strategy in your life!

What To Save: Cardboard Box and Beyond

Honestly, you could start saving things for reuse at any point in the year. But you’ll probably find that you receive more packages during the holiday season than any other time in the year.

So, when you receive all those packages, you should consider saving any kind of box and the stuffing inside those boxes. When I say stuffing, I’m referring to the bubble wrap, the big plastic air bags, or even paper stuffing. You could also even save shipping bags for oddly shaped gifts, I’m thinking of those bags that clothes often come in.

You’ll want to find a convenient location for these things because you’ll obviously need to access them later. I like to store my boxes in the closet or collapse them and put them under my bed.

Let’s recap, and then talk about what to do with these things now that you’ve saved them. The things you can save and reuse are:

Boxes
Stuffing
Shipping Bags

Reusing Packaging in Your Home

Boxes

Boxes are easy because we all know what can and cannot fit into a box. You can easily determine if a certain box is something you can use or not. If you decide that you don’t have a need for a box of a certain shape or size, DON’T throw it away. I’ll talk about what you can do with it later in this post.

Stuffing

The next material you can use is the stuffing, as I called it. Stuffing is great and really versatile and I use it in 3 ways. The first two uses are identical to how companies use them originally. If you have valuables, stuffing can help cushion them and prevent them from breaking in the unwrapping frenzy.

In the event that a gift is too small for a box, stuffing can help keep items in place by taking up any extra space in the box. This increases the amount of boxes you can reuse!

And third, you can actually use some stuffing as wrapping! This mainly applies for paper stuffing but feel free to get creative here too. Below I have a picture of the paper stuffing Grove Collaborative uses. I could use that as a cushion for fragile items or to take up extra OR I could use it to wrap some gifts.

Grove’s packaging is really long so it can give you a lot of surface area to use. If plain brown paper seems a little boring, then you can easily spice it up with some twine or reusable ribbons. You could also distress it for a more worn vibe, or even color/draw on it. You really have a blank slate there.

So those are some ways you can reuse packaging in your house to reduce holiday waste! But let’s talk about some ways you can still reduce waste when you don’t necessarily need the supplies for yourself.

Connecting with Others to Reduce and Reuse Packaging

The short solution here is just to connect with others and spread the wealth. If you have boxes you don’t need, then share them for others to reuse. The same applies to other materials, not just your unused cardboard box. You could be saving them money and sharing the environmental love at the same time.

Bonus, maybe they have packaging materials that you could really use too! You won’t know unless you open that pathway of collaboration.

Opening those pathways for communication can be a little trickier or feel more overwhelming than they actually are though. So I’ve brainstormed various positions or communities you might find yourself in that are really friendly for this kind of community collaboration.

As a friendly reminder, if you participate in an exchange like the ones I’ve listed as examples, then you’ll want to make sure you mark out, scratch off, peel off, or in some way destroy any personal info on packaging before giving it to someone.

College Students

Organizing a cardboard box drive is a great idea for college students! It can show organization and communication skills, and more. There are so many people you could reach out to in order to get a drive put together, so my list is not exhaustive but just some ideas to get you thinking.

You could consider reaching out to your RA or housing staff, they regularly host events and could help you organize a cardboard box drive for your building. You could also consider reaching out to the environmental club, student government association, student activities board, a professor you’re close with, etc.

This can be as big or small as you want it to be. You could organize something between you and your closest friends or something as large as the whole campus.

Student Leaders

This might be the best position in order to organize a cardboard box drive. I am a previous Resident Assistant, Orientation Leader, Tutor, etc. and I know first hand that there are so many opportunities to push your own initiatives. So speak up and organize! Chances are you already know the right channels.

You might consider speaking to your boss, the committee you’re on, or other leaders on campus. This can be as big or as small as you want it to be!

If you’re not a student or working in a school, then you might live in an apartment complex or a neighborhood. These next two are for you.

Teachers

This is a great activity you, as a teacher, could host that also brings awareness to waste and the 3 R’s (reduce, reuse, and recycle). This could be implemented on a classroom level, a team level, or even a school level.

Determining how big your dreams are will be the first step in figuring out who you’ll need to reach out to for approval or collaboration. I won’t pretend to know school politics so I’ll leave that up to you.

High School Students and Younger

If you’re in high school, middle school, or even elementary school, your school is a great place to host a cardboard box drive. It could be just for cardboard boxes or other packaging materials like the ones I’ve discussed as well.

What you’ll want to do is reach out to your teacher, the environmental club, or another person or group of authority you’re connected with. They will help you put your ideas into action.

Apartment Complex/Residents

Apartment Complexes are often similar to University Housing in that they also host regular events for their residents. Sometimes they will organize food trucks, community cookouts, or other things. A cardboard box drive is a great and low effort event that they could oversee for the community.

You would just want to reach out to your property manager or assistant property manager and present the idea. You might see a range of responses. I would expect anything from them completely running the drive to them simply distributing information. I don’t believe it’s likely that they’ll completely shut you down, especially if you are interested in taking more responsibility for the drive.

Neighborhood/Homeowners

If you live in a neighborhood, finding out who to contact or where to host a drive is a little less clear. For starters, you could try reaching out to your version of the Homeowners Association. If there are indoor community areas, they likely control them.

You would want clearance before setting up a drop off/pick up location for boxes and materials at something like a community gym or event area.

If that route doesn’t work, you could also just reach out through your community Facebook group. Most neighborhoods have them and you might not have a communal location for dropping off and picking up materials but you could still share what you would like to give away and/or what you need.

Church

Last, but not least, Church. This will vary based on the size of your church, if that’s something you participate in. If you attend a larger congregation you might think about hosting a drive within your Sunday school/home group. If you practice with a smaller congregation then a drive for the full community might be more feasible.

Knowing who to contact here for a larger drive is challenging. You know your church best. You might think about contacting the secretary (if you have just one), an event planner, there could be any number of people to contact. My best recommendation would be to start with a group you are most comfortable with and go from there.

Let's Wrap Things Up

(I love a good pun!) Reducing the need for brand new packaging materials just to be used on Christmas morning is wasteful, so reusing packaging supplies you already have is a great way to celebrate the holidays sustainably. No matter how big or how small a route you choose to take, any route is leading to a more sustainable end.

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In case you didn’t catch my post about whether metal straws are actually eco-friendly, you can check it out here.

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