That's a thought, thanks! I don't plant much anymore, but my son and DIL do a lot of it.

What gets me is packing peanuts. I. Hate. Packing. Peanuts. It's like whatever you order,they find the biggest box to put it in, then fill it with 400 thousand packing peanuts. I will forever be finding random packing peanuts hidden in corners of the house.

Amazon was really bad this past Christmas season about putting things in inappropriately huge boxes, then filling them with those lengths of plastic pillow things. (Not bubble wrap)The longest one I measured was 24 feet long. I had to pop each air pillow or it would have taken an entire trash bag to dispose of it.

So yeah, I am with ya.

Yes, Susan, use it just like cardboard in your garden, just use several layers. :) and please, don't put it in a plastic bag before putting in the recycle bin. All plastic bags full of stuff are almost always discarded. The recycle items run down a conveyor belt, and stuffed plastic bags end up in the garbage. There isn't a machine that empties them....

Moni

You can recycle those plastic pillows wherever you can recycle plastic bags: grocery stores, target, etc.

I saw a documentary about plastic bags getting into the recycling and what a mess they are. They get all tangled in the sorting machines and cause a lot of damage.

Eight one feet of brown paper is a lot! I wonder if a nursery school might want it for some art project.

When my new dishes arrived from Sur La Table the packaging took more space than the dishes, although in that case it's understandable since the contents were fragile.

I hate packing peanuts. At least the plastic pillows are recyclable.

No, I never put plastic bags in recycling--just the ones I fill with plastic grocery bags, and they go back to the grocery store. I should have explained that the plastic bag would temporarily store the paper in the ice house until I could recycle it.

I'm not a fan of packing peanuts either. They have their use, but it's almost impossible to handle them without having some land on the floor. And they take up so much room if you want to store them. I save some of the air pillows, but not as much as I used to when I was selling more things on eBay. These days I just slit them with a utility knife and put them in recycling.

While I'm at it, why are so few plastics marked with the recycling symbol? I realize certain kinds of plastic can't be recycled, but I suspect a lot of unmarked plastic packaging could be. And if we're drowning in plastic (which we are!), why do some supplement manufacturers put a small number of pills in much larger plastic bottles? I used to write to companies about various recycling issues, but at some point wondered if I was wasting my time and energy.

At least it’s paper. We can grow a tree but cannot grow oil. The paper gives someone a job.

It wasn't plastic, but I once received a single box of paper clips in a very large box - like 18 x 24 x 12 large.

I hate pill bottles that are only 1/4 to 1/3 full. Aspirin, Vitamin D and several other supplements are packed that way and it is so annoying!

plastic bags can't go into regular recycling. There are special drop off places, as I stated above, in some grocery stores and target, maybe other places. Those places only take plastic bags and the deflated pillows, dry cleaning bags, too, I believe.

Wow! My 6 year old GS would love that roll of paper for arts and crafts. My 9 year old GS would use the paper for fire starter. :)

Amazon respects your wishes for minimal packaging. Just make a request.

Wow, that’s a ridiculous amount of paper, but at least it’s paper. Every nursery school and kindergarten class in my town would love that donation!

It would also make good shipping paper if you ever need to put brown paper on the outside of box you are shipping.

If you're active on Nextdoor or such, offer it up for moving packing. I am saving the paper we get for when I start packing dishes.

That is a lot of paper! Unfortunately it’s probably all crumpled up so probably not so desirable for art paper. And the postal service doesn’t like brown paper wrapped packages. If you have a UPS store or other shipping store near you they may take it for packaging - they always take my peanuts and pillows.

It's been several years (maybe 10) since I've received packing peanuts.

Bluebell is right: the paper is totally crumpled. Not suitable for art at all. And right again: As far as I know, my Post Office won't take packages wrapped in paper. This is fine with me, as I have lots of boxes and don't need that extra step.

I don't know what Nextdoor is; I live in a rural area. When I heated with wood, that brown paper was the best for starting fires.

I'll contact my UPS store to see if they're interested in the the paper and plastic pillows. If so, I could become their hero. :-)

The wrinkled paper can be ironed with a warm iron and it's perfect for art.

I've gotten a few of those and keep the paper if there is that much of it. Just flatten out the first few feet as much as you can and roll around a dowel or broom handle. Keep flattening the paper and rolling. If you have a cat, this is a job they enjoy assisting with. When you have a roll, stick your finger in the middle and start twisting the roll to tighten it up. If you can get the roll tight, it will flatten out quite a bit. It's great for wrapping fragile items that you don't want to end up with newsprint on. I've sent a lot of glassware to the thrift store in recycled brown paper :) Of course, if you won't use it that way, there's nothing wrong with recycling it either., but it is very easy to save if you can reuse it.

"The paper gives someone a job."

Plastic products do too.

alisande, I think there are worse things to be concerned with. They used paper, a gentle product for the environment after use no matter where it goes or what's done with it.

How would you have felt if the product had been inadequately cushioned in the box and arrived damaged? To me, that's not a better outcome. If the alternative is using too much protection versus using not enough, please put me down for "too much".

The wrinkled paper can be ironed with a warm iron and it's perfect for art.

I'm frugal by nature, but apparently not frugal enough to iron 81 feet of paper. :-)

Thanks for the tip, Quasifish. I made three rolls out of it last night, not nearly as neat as your rolls would be. But my goal was to get it out of the house. I have packing supplies galore--so much of it that I bought a tall Origami shelving unit to hold the big bags of it. This is from when I was selling on eBay. I haven't been doing much of that anymore, so I don't need to add to my supply.

It's hard to imagine a 40# sack of sunflower seeds being damaged by inadequate cushioning! Something breakable, yes, but a big ole sack of seeds........not so much :-)

My guess is they didn't have an appropriately sized carton to ship in so used the crumpled paper just as filler to prevent the sack from shifting around too much during shipping/delivery.

The good news is that the paper is highly and easily recyclable as others have mentioned.........if a bit of an inconvenience to deal with until that is accomplished.

I would love that paper, perfect for getting the wood stove going or shipping something else or mulch for the garden. 81’ is crazy, tho.

I didn't mention it in my first post, but I also reuse the brown paper in the bottom of a bird cage sometimes. Or put it down before doing paint touch ups. Lots of uses for the brown paper. If you can't use it, or don't want to store it, by all means recycle it.

A few years ago I had garbage bags of fairly nice bubble wrap and could find no takers. It made me sick to throw it away, but a house isn't a landfill and I had no room to store it.

Lush Cosmetics used biodegradable packing peanuts.

I like the peanuts to ship birthday and Christmas gifts in. As we quite often include a bottle of wine or other fragiles it comes in handy

I could use that brown paper which does seem scarce these days. I like to put a sheet of it on my counter when I am preparing veggies and then wrap the scraps up to toss the package into the compost bin.

My local UPS store is always very happy to take clean packing peanuts, bubble wrap and pillows. But, they will not take any kind of packing paper -- he told me that UPS forbids its re-use.

A lot of packing peanuts are compostable anymore. I think that they're made out of cornstarch. To test, wet a peanut. If it dissolves, I toss them into the compost bin. You'll soon be able to recognize them because they look a bit different from the styrofoam ones.

I have ironed that brown packing paper to line the bottom of the bird cages. I used the last that I had to mask walls when I was doing some concrete floor work and then painting the floor. Burned it in the fire pit to dispose of it.

You can also kinda flatten it out and lay it on the compost pile.

Thanks, everyone. I ended up unrolling one of the three rolls and using it to wrap and store stemware that I use as decor with flameless tea lights during the Christmas season. The other two rolls went into recycling.