Narrator: There's nothing like unwrapping a new gift.
But did you ever think about how much time, money,
and effort ends up in a pile of useless trash on the ground,
just for a few moments of joy?
Every year between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day,
Americans dump an additional 7 million pounds
of trash containing wrapping paper, ribbons, and bows.
That's 25% more than the rest of the year.
But one startup is out to change that.
Meagan: The label itself says "Reuse me" loud and clear.
The idea is that we want to make reuse very easy.
We don't want any of these ending up in a landfill.
Narrator: Meagan Downey created a reusable gift wrap
in her basement.
Meagan: Works like a ribbon.
Narrator: These fabric squares pay homage to furoshiki,
the Japanese art of wrapping.
And every Shiki Wrap is made from recycled plastic bottles.
We traveled to Vermont
to see why one woman wants everyone
to wrap gifts in worldwide waste.
Using a Shiki Wrap is easy.
But manufacturing one is not.
The wrap start as plastic bottles.
Meagan: Each wrap, depending on the size,
is recycling between one and a half to seven bottles.
Narrator: Meagan tries to minimize the impact
of every step in the process.
She sources fabric called Repreve
from a company in North Carolina.
Meagan: It is so soft and stretchy.
Narrator: First, the company shreds the bottles
into flakes.
And then it melts them into resin chips.
Meredith: These look like little balls,
kind of similar to if you ever had Nerds candy as a kid.
Narrator: Chips of resin get heated again
and spun into strands that are only a few microns wide.
Meredith: The spinneret looks a lot
like a showerhead.
And if you look at the polymer
that's coming out of the spinneret,
it looks a lot like water.
Narrator: Strands wind together
to create a polyester yarn.
Each bobbin rolling off the assembly line weighs 15 pounds
and can hold up to 540 miles of yarn.
Meredith: We are running our process
at more than 3,000 meters per minute.
That's almost 10,000 feet per minute of yarn
that is being wound up.
Narrator: The yarn can be woven into a fabric
at a factory like this
and then dyed with the bright designs
that make Shiki Wraps look like wrapping paper.
Meagan's business is just starting out.
She sold 4,000 wraps in her first year of sales.
But it's not much compared
to the estimated $15 billion gift-wrap market.
If you go to any drugstore, any supermarket,
I swear, once you see it, you cannot unsee it.
All the gift wrap, the paper gift wrap.
Narrator: But according to surveys,
more than half of the people in the US think wrapping gifts
is the worst part of the holiday season.
If American families wrapped
just three fewer presents each year,
it would save enough paper to cover an area the size
of Washington, DC.
Shiki Wraps aren't just intended to save paper from trees.
Traditional fabric dying can involve harmful chemicals
and a lot of water, about 1.2 trillion gallons per year.
So Shiki Wrap employs a process that uses almost zero water
and is chemical-free.
I've been in printing really my entire life.
But I've been doing this kind of printing
for about six years.
Narrator: This is Jon Gintzler, LA Print Lab.
He uses a technique called dye sublimation.
Jon: Sublimation really refers to something going
from a solid to a gas without being a liquid.
So it's like ice going to fog without being water.
Narrator: Jon takes a digital file of Meagan's design
and prints it onto recycled paper.
Jon: The same technology that would be an inkjet printer
on your desk, just a lot more high-grade and industrial.
Narrator: Then Jon transfers the printed design
and blank fabric into the dye sublimator.
Heat transfers the ink from the paper to the fabric
without any liquid.
Jon repeats the process
to give Meagan her double-sided design
before sending it back to Vermont.
The final step is cutting out the squares
at a factory called Fourbital.
Carey: This machine uses a small laser
to cut exactly the dimensions
so every time, she gets the exact size that she needs.
Narrator: The laser cauterizes the ends,
leaving clean edges.
Meagan: It doesn't make sense to sew it for this purpose
when the laser cutter is far more efficient.
You don't need thread.
Narrator: Meagan then takes the finished wraps
to be packaged and shipped.
But she also has leftover scraps.
And she's now selling them, too.
Meagan: Trust me, when your waste comes back to you,
you're very motivated to minimize it.
Narrator: The name Shiki Wrap comes
from the Japanese word furoshiki.
The literal translation is "bath spread."
It dates back to around 700 BC,
when people would carry personal belongings
to public bathhouses in a neatly tied cloth.
This is Megumi Esselstrom.
Megumi: You will find two other corners.
Narrator: She's from northeastern Japan,
and she consults Meagan on her product.
Traditionally, we use these fabrics,
just the square-shaped fabrics,
to wrap so many different things to carry place to place.
Just take knot part out for decoration, like that.
Narrator: But while Meagan and Megumi try
to change people's wrapping habits,
Shiki Wrap still faces some hurdles.
Meagan: If you're going to make something sustainably
in the US or locally, right,
it costs a lot of money to do that.
Narrator: Shiki Wraps start at $14
for each reusable wrapping square,
and it's $130 for the whole nine-piece holiday collection,
which sold out for the 2022 season.
But Meagan says that price point reflects the idea
that this is a one-time purchase.
Meagan: Because you can reuse it as tote bags, scarves,
gift wrap, head wrap, all kinds of things.
People tell me I'm crazy for selling it as gift wrap
and that I should sell it as other things.
So versatile, so fun.
Narrator: So the next time you're staring down
in an aisle of different single-use wrapping papers,
consider one you could use forever.
It's so wonderful when you give a gift to someone,
a gift that you've spent hours selecting, and they open it.
Who wants, after that experience,
to have the guilt of the waste
and the — you know?
Nobody wants that feeling.