This holiday season, Niagara College’s Student Administrative Council (NCSAC) is helping students and staff reduce the amount of single-use gift wrapping they use, through a new, student-led eco-friendly Green Gift Wrapping project. Starting November 11, members of the college community are being asked to donate re-usable and recyclable gift wrapping materials – like used gift bags, newspapers and magazines, twine and ribbons, and even children’s artwork. Donations can be made at the NCSAC offices at both campuses.
A Green Gift Wrapping table will then be set up outside the Student Commons at the Niagara-on-the-Lake Campus from November 25 to Dec. 6, from 11 a.m to 2 p.m. Volunteers will wrap gifts in 100% recyclable or reusable material in exchange for a monetary or non-perishable food donation. Monetary donations will go towards NCSAC’s Nourishing Minds program and non-perishable food items will be donated to Community Care of St. Catharines and Thorold.
The program is the brainchild of enterprising NC students Jessica Zadori and Christine Keyes, who wanted to help make the NC community’s Christmas season more sustainable. “I joined the Environmental Management and Assessment program to use my chemistry and petroleum background to contribute to a more sustainable world,” says Keyes. “It wasn’t until I started in this program that I realized the magnitude of the waste we generate. I volunteer gift wrap almost every holiday season. But most gift wrapping is a single use non-recyclable item that ends up in our landfills. So I thought why not make the change this Christmas?”
Zero Waste Canada, a Vancouver-based advocacy group, estimates the Canadian tosses about 50 kilograms of garbage over the holidays. Altogether, 540,000 tonnes of wrapping paper and gift bags are thrown out each year.
While the Green Gift Wrapping table is only available at the NOTL Campus this year, Keyes is hoping that a positive reception of the program this year will result in an expansion next year to both campuses. “I would love for this initiative to be an annual occurrence at NOTL and the Welland campus too! My hopes are that if we can demonstrate successful charitable gift wrapping using green materials, that other charitable gift wrapping throughout the community will get on board too.”
A full list of the items being collected is below:
- Used gift bags
- Reusable shopping bags
- Saved wrapping paper
- Brown bags (such as LCBO bags)
- Scarfs or clothing that can no longer be worn
- Fabric
- Left over ribbon, yarn, etc…
- Old towels, sheets, pillowcases
- Newspaper
- Magazines
- Old calendars
- Children’s art work
- Old maps
- Kraft paper
- Twine
- Burlap
- Unwanted boxes
