What to do with
Wrapping paper
Some councils will accept wrapping paper in their household recycling collection scheme but others will not, so please check with them first.
- Some local authorities accept wrapping paper in home recycling collections
- Others ask for wrapping paper to be taken to the local recycling centre
- Some do not collect wrapping paper at all because wrapping paper is not accepted by some recycled paper mills. There are a number of reasons for this.
The materials that go into making some wrapping paper result in it not always being accepted for recycling:
- Wrapping paper is often dyed, laminated and/or contains non-paper additives such as gold and silver coloured shapes, glitter, plastics etc which cannot be recycled
- Some wrapping paper is very thin and contains few good quality fibres for recycling
- A lot of wrapping paper has sticky tape attached to it which makes it very difficult to recycle.
Before recycling, remove any sticky tape and decorations such as ribbons and bows as these cannot be recycled.
Wrapping paper can only be recycled if it passes the scrunch test - simple paper wrap can be recycled but foil or glitter-decorated paper cannot and needs to go in the general waste.
Find your nearest recycling centre
Our Recycling Locator tool can tell you where your nearest recycling locations are.