Heritage Furoshiki

Founder: Chloe Robinson

Website: https://heritagefuroshiki.com/ (external link, opens in new window) 

A gift-wrap and gift all in one.

Gift giving has been a part of global cultures and rituals for thousands of years. However, as consumer culture grew, people eventually began to wrap their gifts in plastic. In Canada, approximately 545,000 tonnes of waste is generated from gift-wrapping each year, and household waste increases more than 25% during the holiday season due to gift-wrapping (Zero Waste Canada).

Plastic waste is a pressing issue to tackle because it has lasting and detrimental environmental effects. In Canada, nearly 90% of plastics end up incinerated, or in our landfills, lakes, parks and oceans. Once in the environment, plastic contaminates ecosystems, kills wildlife, and leaches toxic chemicals (Environmental Defense). Heritage Furoshiki strives to combat this issue by providing an eco-friendly, sustainable, and multi-purpose alternative to plastic gift-wrap using the ancient Japanese craft of furoshiki.

The idea for Heritage was born in December 2020, at the end of the unprecedented year in which COVID-19 took the world by storm. Our founder, Chloe Robinson, made the choice to avoid the use of plastic when wrapping gifts for family and friends during Christmas. After searching up some Internet tutorials for wrapping with cloth, she came across the art of furoshiki. As she researched the craft and taught herself how to sew using textile scraps, Heritage Furoshiki began to take shape.

Heritage offers a collection of limited edition furoshiki each season, so no textile goes to waste. We source out local and Indigenous Canadian artists to design each fabric which is inspired by heritage sites and communities around the country. Heritage Furoshiki has endless aesthetic and functional uses: it can double as a scarf, a hair accessory, a tapestry, a protective book cover, a duffel bag, and more. This ensures that each cloth will last customers for years to come. At Heritage, every customer has a chance to see their story or their passion in our gift-wrap, because it is personalized in a way that disposable plastic gift-wrap never could be.