Beeswax Food Wraps

Plastic What You Preach
by Plastic What You Preach
3 Materials
$15
20 Minutes
Easy
My family are all on a big eco drive. Beeswax food wraps are a great alternative for cling film and foil! They're reusable, durable and beeswax has natural antibacterial properties so they help keep food fresh.
So here are your 2 main materials that you need. Beeswax and cotton. The beeswax does need to be grated so you can buy pellets to make things quicker. I went for bars to grate myself to save money. The cotton can be from whatever source you like as long as it's 100% cotton. I bought fat quarters on offer in Aldi.In addition to these materials you'll also need an iron, baking paper and a tea towel (or ironing board if you'd prefer).
For the sake of the tutorial I decided to make a large wrap, but you can cut the cotton to whatever size you want your wrap.I protected my dining table with a tea towel and then laid baking paper bigger than the cotton down. Place the cotton onto the baking paper and then sprinkle the grated/pellets of beeswax onto the cotton as shown above.
Place more baking paper over the top of the beeswax covered cotton. As you can see here the baking paper was narrower than the cotton so I overlapped 2 pieces. This is an extra large wrap for loaves of bread- for sandwiches etc obviously it can be much smaller. There is no need to put beeswax underneath the cotton as well as on top because it will melt through in the next step.
Now you're ready to iron. Set your iron to a medium setting and iron over the top of the baking paper. The picture above shows where the beeswax has melted (where you can clearly see the pattern of the cotton). This is a different wrap to the previous photo because I forgot to take the ironing pictures for that one *doh*.
This picture just shows again how it will look when the wax has melted. You need to make sure you melt the wax all the way to the edges. I usually have excess wax on the baking paper when I'm done- around the edges.
When the wax has all melted into the cotton, quickly put the iron to one side, remove the top layer of baking paper and peel off the cotton. Be careful as it will still be very hot. I find the end result is much better if you remove the cotton immediately rather than peeling it off after it has cooled. I found that excess wax was visible on the finished wrap when I let it cool first and I didn't like how it looked.There you have it. Your finished wrap. I find these best for dry foods such as sandwiches, biscuits, other dry snacks, etc. On the occasion I have used them on sandwiches that contain chutney or sauce of some kind, I have found the wraps stain quite easily, so just bear that in mind.To maintain, simply wipe over with a damp cloth after each use. Do not submerge in hot water as the wax will start to melt.After a long period of continued use your wrap may look tired and tatty. Simply repeat the making process with less wax to give it a new lease of life.


I have costed all of my ingredients which was enough to make approximately 17 wraps of various sizes. Per wrap it's probably less than £1.For more eco ideas, visit @plastic_what_you_preach on insragram
Resources for this project:
Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.
Hometalk may collect a small share of sales from the links on this page.More info
Frequently asked questions
Have a question about this project?
3 of 5 questions
Comments
Join the conversation
2 of 14 comments
  • Chris Huffman Chris Huffman on Feb 03, 2020

    Yes!

  • Shery Shery on Feb 04, 2020

    My family and I are planning to have our own family hobby farm-which will include honey bees, sheep, goats,etc-...my point being that this wrap will be perfect for so many things like gorgeous gifts! It’s going to be a couple of years, but I have no doubt it’ll be more than well worth the wait...

Next