Image Credit: Jamie Street
Would you like to make Christmas a little bit greener this year? You don't have to give up all the fun of Christmas to have a eco-friendly and sustainable Christmas.
With just a few thoughtful changes to your usual Christmas you can have all the fun without the waste. If you love the fun of Christmas crackers but dispair at the waste created by plastic packaging, shiny plastic trimmings, single use paper and the cheap plastic novelties, you will be delighted to know that there are lots of more environmentally friendly options available.
You can replace single-use crackers with eco-friendly Christmas crackers which can be either reusable, recyclable or you can create your oown home made crackers by recycling items from your home.
Here are some of the best recyclable and reusuable crackers for Christmas 2024, plus some ideas on how to make your Christmas crackers even more sustainable and environmentally friendly.
Keep This Cracker is a plastic free, reusable, fill-your-own cracker, which is made in UK and is pet-friendly too.
Assemble the crackers, add your own gifts, hats, mottos and jokes, add a snap if you want and fold up after Christmas to reuse next year.
These beautiful fabric crackers come with a strong cardboard inner tube and you can fill them as you wish.
With a choice of embroidered designs these refillable crackers will become part of your Christmas traditions.
These eco-friendly, build your own craft paper crackers come in plastic-free packagaing and include Ribbon Ties, Hats, Forfeits and Snaps.
Add your own gifts and the crackers are fully recyclable.
Fans of Percy Pig will be delighted to know that these crackers are 100% plastic free and fully recyclable.
They come with a Pin The Tail on Percy game and come complete with hats, jokes, an Percy tail sticker and a Percy poster sheet with instructions.
40 million Christmas crackers are thrown away in the UK alone each year, but this cracker can be planted in the garden!
The paper contains wildflower seeds which will grow to produce flowers and attract the insects that pollinate our trees, fruit and vegetables. An all-round winner.
These fully recyclable Christmas crackers contain a selection of non-plastic gifts along with the traditional hat and joke. Gifts include mini playing cards, pencils mini jigsaws pencils and dice.
These luxurious and elegant crackers are fully recyclable and plastic free and decorated with biodegradable Tencel ribbon.
Each one contains a terrible joke, a crown and a carefully selected thoughtful and useful gift.
These unusual tin crackers are a fantastic idea; fill the shaped tins with your choice of gifts and you can reuse them over and over again.
They supply a starter kit of hats and jokes, and as you don't use snaps with them, they are pet-friendly too.
As an alternative to the traditional Christmas cracker, fill one of these personalised 100% cotton bags with gifts, jokes and mottoes on Christmas Day
Made by Rocket & Fox these are handmade in the UK and could be reused year after year and become part of your family tradition.
These build-your-own crackers have a stunning embossed linen-effect finish on them. Take care of them and you could use these over and over again.
The kit includes 6 boards, hats and mottoes, you just add your own gifts and tie up with the raffia ties provided.
These elegant fully recyclable, plastic free Christmas crackers are have a festive woodland design with mushrooms printed on them.
They contain a paper hat, a joke and a paper tree decoration.
Handmade and recyclable, these crackers contain hats, jokes, quiz along with a folding paper tree decoration.
In and elegant and festive red with a subtle snowflake design they will look beautiful on your Christmas Day dinner table.
Support the RSPB with these Christmas Crackers which contain wildflower seeds. Each cracker contains a packet of flower seeds, perfect for planting in your own garden. The crackers also contain party hats, bird facts and jokes.
The crackers are plastic free and fully recyclable as well.
Add your own gifts to these 100% recyclable and plastic free crackers, which contain hats and jokes.
They are made from materials from FSC®-certified forests and other controlled sources, meaning that everything in this box is recyclable, from the crackers to the box itself.
You can make sure that your crackers are sustainable by making your own, by recycling, reusing materials that you have at home.
There are lots of ways that you can make your own crackers. You can make your own paper and card crackers, sew your own fabric crackers and make your own gift bags as alternative crackers.
For all of these ideas you can fill the crackers with your choice of small gifts, write your own jokes, make your own paper hats or buy cracker filler kits which include hats and jokes.
Some of these kits will include cracker snaps so that they go bang just like bought ones.
It is very easy to make your own crackers. You will need to start collecting cardboard tubes (i.e. from toilet rolls) a few weeks in advance and you will also need paper, string or ribbon and some sticky tape.
If you prefer to read there is a really good clear explanation of how to make them at Jamie Oliver's website, or if you prefer to watch videos this one from Zero Waste Club also shows you how to make your own paper hats as well.
If you have some basic sewing skills you can make your own fabric reusable crackers.
You can make them out of any odds and ends of fabric that you have around the house and if you don't have anything suitable, you could upcycle old textiles such as tablecloths, or clothing, or buy some secondhand clothing in an attractive print to cut up.
Just like the paper crackers, you will need to collect some toilet roll tubes.
These type of crackers are very simple to sew, as basically you only need to make a rectangle of fabric, hem it, wrap it around the cardboard tube and tie the ends with ribbon, string, raffia or make your own ties from the fabric.
Obviously you won't be able to pull these crackers, you'll need to untie them to get at your gifts!
If you are a bit more skilled at sewing, you could have a go at these really clever pullable fabric crackers from Just Fabrics which are fixed together with velcro.
This is another simple item to sew if you have limited sewing skills, and once again you can use up scraps of fabrics or recycle clothing and textiles to make them.
This video tutorial from Dainty Diaries is quick and simple.
Our final idea for reusuable Christmas Crackers is another alternative idea. You can make these beautiful origami gift bags with any paper that you have available and add small gifts, hats and mottoes.
This video from SB Crafts shows you how to make them.
Now you have lots of ideas for how to reduce the enormous amount of waste that is created by Christmas Crackers each year.
Most Popular in Recycling
CDs & DVDs
Videotapes & Cassettes
Duvets & Pillows
Ink Cartridges
Shredded Paper
Glasses (Spectacles)
Stamps
Pens
......Recycling A-Z