Of all the stuff we toss into the blue bin, more paper finds a second life than anything else. Around 68% of it gets recycled. It’s easy to see a statistic like that and gleefully and indiscriminately chuck all your paper castoffs into the mix. Some of it, though, will gunk up the works. Paper towels and tissues, for instance, are too weak and have fibers that are too short to survive processing. Most wrapping paper is a no-go, too. Why? Plastic.
Any gift wrap that’s glittery, metallic, or high-gloss usually has a plastic coating, which means it’s destined for the dump. Don’t believe us? Try the scrunch test: If you crumple gift wrap into a ball and it unfurls or springs back, it’s probably got a layer of plastic. No wonder millions of pounds of wrapping paper head to the landfill each year.
The easiest way to get around this is to avoid store-bought wrap entirely and get creative with found stuff like newspapers and fabrics. Realistically, though, you might need a fresh roll or two along the way, so we spent several weeks scouring store shelves for actually-recyclable gift wraps.
We tested six popular options—evaulating how easily they crease, rip, and might handle oddly shaped objects—and sniffed around the environmental stewardship of the companies who make them. Our choice for the best recyclable gift wrap is as much a present to the planet as it is to your holiday routine.
one5c’s pick: Wondershop by Target
As best we can tell, the vast majority of the Wondershop line of gift wrap from Target can go in the blue bin, but we were pleasantly surprised by the options they offer that are also printed on recycled stock ($3/roll; target.com). The paper is made from up to 90% recycled content that’s certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), folds and creases smoothly, doesn’t rip too easily when snagged, and was also the only paper we looked at that didn’t come sheathed in shrink wrap or with a hefty inner tube. Regardless of how you feel about Target, it is one of the I-guess-this-is-gooder guys in the big-box game: They’re making progress on their emissions-reduction goals, including a small dip in supply-chain emissions—which is the hardest area for a retailer to make a dent.
Runner-up: Hallmark Kraft Wrapping Paper
Right off the roll, Hallmark’s Kraft gift wrap ($17 for 3 rolls; hallmark.com) felt the closest to newsprint of any we looked at, which meant our hopes for its durability were not exactly high. Au contraire! It withstood rips well, creased nicely, and handled a complex kimono-style fold better than any other paper on the field. In a way, its thinness is its greatest strength, because it makes it easy to finagle around wonky items. The paper’s made with virgin wood pulp, but it’s certified by the FSC as coming from responsibly managed forests. Hallmark also has emissions-reduction goals that are verified by the Science-based Targets Initiative.
What recyclable gift wraps we tested
Finding gift wrap you can put in the recycling has major needle-in-a-haystack vibes, so we spent several weeks scouring the physical and digital racks for rolls that were either clearly labeled as recyclable or that we felt confident could go in the bin—that is, ones printed on plain white or kraft paper and without glittery or shiny embellishments or high-gloss finishes. Whenever they were available, we went with options that use recycled materials, but didn’t limit our search to them.
In the end, we settled on six recyclable gift wraps that are widely available in-store or online, come in at least four patterns, and cost $0.25 or less per square foot. We split the field between kraft-based-papers and those that have the appearance of more-traditional gift wrap. Because of Hallmark’s omnipresence in the world of presents, we tested two options bearing the golden crown: a kraft-based option and a more-traditional heavy-duty one.
This one’s complicated: Because there’s so much variation within some brands, we’ve taken the extra step of listing off the specific patterns and colors we IDed as recyclable to the best of our ability. If you’re not sure if a particular paper is recyclable and it’s not marked as such (be careful for misleading chasing arrows symbols that might only apply to the inner tube!), go find the plainest brownest paper you can.
- American Greetings Gift Wrap, selections (list of options)
- Celebrate It by Michael’s, selections (list of options)
- Hallmark Kraft Wrapping Paper
- Hallmark Recyclable Wrapping Paper (hallmark.com; amazon.com)
- Ruspepa Kraft Wrapping Paper
- Wondershop by Target, recycled selections (list of options)
How we picked the best recyclable gift wrap
Our product recommendations are based on two parallel assessment tracks: one for performance and one for sustainability. These ratings combine to land on our final winner, which represents the ideal blend of a product that’s good for the Earth and for your life. Read more about our assessment process here.
How we tested recyclable gift wrap
We’re into minimal gifting here at one5c, so this wasn’t a situation where we could embark on a long-term test to measure performance during “everyday” use. So, we instead devised a series of four assessments to simulate the common stresses, challenges, and mishaps that come with preparing presents.
- Adhesion test: Stocks like ones with a kraft-paper base or that use recycled materials can be on the stiffer side, which means taped seams have an annoying habit of popping open. To see how well things stick shut, we fashioned cylinders of each paper and used a one-inch piece of cellophane tape to hold them shut. We checked the seal for any lifting or popping after 2 hours and again after 2 days.
- Crease test: Again, recycled or recyclable papers can be on the stiffer side. So, we wrapped a standard gift or shirt box with each paper, noting how many times we had to press each fold to form a sharp crease—as well as how easily we were able to form standard tucked or triangular corners on the ends.
- Wrapping adaptability test: To measure how well papers could handle intricate, overlapping creases—or the sloppy-ish folds that happen when you’re dealing with a corner-less object—we wrapped books using the complex kimono-style folding pattern. Not only does this style of swaddling require numerous overlapping creases, it also uses only one piece of tape to secure the present; seeing how well that seal holds served as a backup adhesion test.
- Strength/tear test: To see how the papers would hold up to snags on tree branches, drops, and or run-ins with the corners of other gifts, we designed a quick DIY version of a lab assessment called the Baumann tear test. We cut strips of each paper and snipped a two-inch slit in the middle of each. We inserted two pens into the slit and pulled outward, noting how much force it took to extend the tear to the end of the strip. We repeated a version of this test while holding each strip firmly at one end and seeing how easily we could extend the tear with a single pen.
How we scored sustainability
Our sustainability ratings take into account three factors: a product’s environmental impact at its production, what happens at its end-of-life, and the manufacturer’s environmental behavior. Production factors in where, how, and with what raw materials a product is made—as well as how it’s transported through the supply chain. End-of-life considers any potential toxicity, like, in the case of paper products, the presence of chlorine-based bleach or plastic. The final factor involves actions the company takes outside the life of a product to minimize its footprint or benefit the environment, and we award bonus points for transparency, as well. These scores are informed inferences based on available information, not full-blown life-cycle analyses.
How Wondership gift wrap performed
Success for gift wrap is kinda a zero-sum game: It either conceals the present inside or it doesn’t. Target’s recycled Wondershop options ($3/roll; target.com) get that job done, even if it might take a little extra effort to get your packages to look just-so. We were able to create smooth, tucked corners on a standard gift box, and the design on the paper didn’t visibly crease or crack when we formed sharp edges. Tape stayed stuck firmly in place—though that’s true of all the papers we tried. Overall, presents came out neat, presentable, and ready to be ripped open.
Folds we made in Wondershop paper laid flat after running over them firmly twice with our thumb, which is fairly par for the course. We had to work on our creases the same amount with the American Greetings rolls ($6/roll; target.com), Celebrate It lineup (from $6/roll; michaels.com), and Ruspepa Kraft Wrapping Paper (from $8/roll; amazon.com) to get them to stay put.
We’ll give the rest of the field, this, though: Not one of them is as hard to deal with as Hallmark’s Recyclable Wrapping Paper ($5/roll; hallmark.com). Even after going over each crease three times and taping things firmly shut, this paper was so stiff its edges and corners ballooned outward. It felt a lot like trying to wrap a present with a big sheet of printer paper, and, even with a lot of effort, all our packages wound up looking somewhat sloppy.
To the touch, Wondershop seemed like the second-flimest paper we tested behind Hallmark’s Kraft Wrapping Paper ($17 for 3 rolls; hallmark.com), but it fared well when we tried to extend an existing rip with the pointy end of a pen. It withstood the same amount of force as both Hallmark brands and American Greetings—but none of them were a match for the heavier paper stock of Ruspepa and Celebrate It, which took the most force to rip end-to-end.
Nothing’s perfect: It’s probably no great surprise to anyone who’s experienced a scratchy tissue or so-so paper towel that products made with recycled paper can have their issues. In this case, the mish-mash of fibers in the recycled stock Wondershop uses caused some hiccups when we tried to layer too many folds on top of one another: We struggled to keep the multi-creased edges of our kimono-clad book from ballooning outward a bit. Again, though, Hallmark’s non-kraft paper fared much worse—looking as if a child had done the wrapping job.
Why Wondershop gift wrap is sustainable
We’ll start by saying that our assessment of Wonderhop’s Earth-friendly flexes is focused on the options we tested, all of which are made with recycled paper. (The entire Wonderhop gift-wrap lineup, as best as we can tell, does tap stock the FSC has rubber-stamped as responsibly sourced and is marked as recyclable.) The papers we bought are comprised of up to 90% recycled material—which is quite a lot. They’re also the only papers we looked at that come sans plastic shrink wrap and without an inner cardboard tube, which further minimizes potential waste.
As far as big-box stores go, Target takes planetary stewardship seriously. It has set science-based targets for cutting emissions, and is on track to hit its goal of sourcing 100% of its electricity from renewable sources 2030. The bullseye also runs a program called Forward Renew to help its suppliers adopt more renewable energy. That’s a positive sign considering that emissions from its supply chain (called Scope 3) account for the largest share of its greenhouse gases.
Nothing’s perfect: We weren’t able to confirm this directly with Target, but as far as we can tell the Wondershop papers don’t come from a factory that’s part of the Forward Renew program. Those efforts are currently focused on U.S. suppliers, and the gift wrap we bought IDs its origin as Indonesia—a country that gets most of its energy from coal.
Target also isn’t exactly on everyone’s nice list at this point, which is fair. Despite efforts to clean up its practices, the store has a tendency to fan the flames of overconsumption and can lean into greenwashy narratives like hawking bamboo-based textiles or talking up “eco-friendly” fast fashion trends like recycled polyester.
The runner-up: Hallmark Kraft Wrapping Paper
Strangely, the strongest-feeling paper we looked at and the flimsiest-feeling were neck-and-neck in our performance tests. Hallmark Kraft Wrapping Paper ($17 for 3 rolls; hallmark.com) was second only to Ruspepa in our wrapping marathon. (Ruspepa, which is one of those brands that seems to exist mostly to sell on Amazon, tanked our sustainability assessment.) Hallmark’s kraft wrap creased beautifully with only a couple passes, is thin enough that even bunched-up folds don’t wind up lumpy or bulky, and didn’t rip easily—despite being as light as it is. The tape on one box corner did pop open after a couple hours, but it stuck back down (and stayed that way) on the second pass.
Hallmark, obviously, trades a lot in paper, so it makes sense that it holds its suppliers to a responsible sourcing policy (aka FSC compliance). Its Kraft wrapping uses virgin-but-responsibly-sourced stock, and some of its more-colorful Recyclable offerings do pull in some recycled material.
The company has emissions goals rubber-stamped by the Science-based Targets Initiative, but we couldn’t find any firm updates on progress since they were set in 2023. Also in need of improvement: While Hallmark does have renewable energy projects underway at some of its facilities, its main gift-wrap manufacturing site is in an area of Kansas that burns a ton of coal.
one5c does not earn a commission on any product purchased through our reviews.
