Behind the Scenes

Wars on both Afghan borders and closed ports have reshaped our supply chain this year. Here's how Waste Free Celebrations is ducking, pivoting and still delivering reusable Christmas crackers for 2026.

Every reusable Christmas cracker and reusable gift bag we sell is sewn by hand by women we employ in Kabul. It's the heart of what we do — meaningful, skilled work for women who need it, and beautifully made products that save mountains of wrapping paper and single-use crackers from landfill each year. This year, that partnership has been tested more than ever, and we wanted to be upfront with you about what's been happening behind the scenes.

Image Caption: Our driver, fixer, resident-do-it-all, Noori; standing by the mini van we use to transport women safely too and from work every day. This was purchased with the funds donated by our lovely customers. 

Wars on Both Borders

Afghanistan is landlocked and has never had a sea port of its own, so everything moving in or out has always depended on its neighbours. This year, with active conflict on both the Pakistan and Iran borders, the routes our finished crackers and gift bags would normally travel to reach a port have been unreliable at best, and closed at worst.

For the women in Kabul who sew every one of our crackers and bags, this hasn't stopped the sewing. It's stopped the goods from easily leaving. That's an enormous difference between a business that can promise you a delivery date and one that's genuinely not sure some weeks — and we've been the latter more often than we'd like this year.

Ducking, Pivoting, Changing and Adapting

With sea freight off the table for long stretches, we've had to get creative to keep our Kabul-made products reaching you at all. In practice, that's meant:

• No sea freight to Australia this year. It simply hasn't been available, so our Australian customers are ordering their reusable crackers and gift bags from our NZ store instead this Christmas.

• Airfreight only, to the US and NZ. Where we'd normally rely on sea freight for cost-effective bulk shipping, we've had to switch to airfreight for the markets we can still reliably serve — and only to the US and here at home. We also re-engaged some of our local Afghan refugees to stitch up a lot of fabric we already had in NZ. 

• Higher prices in the US. Airfreight isn't cheap, and it shows. We've had to pass some of that cost on in our US pricing this year, and we're not going to pretend otherwise.

• An overland route to the UK, via Uzbekistan. Not every workaround has been a step backwards. We've found a working overland route north through Uzbekistan that lets us keep goods moving to the UK, even while the routes south and east stay difficult. It's longer and it's not simple, but it's ours, and it's working.

It's been a genuine season of swings and roundabouts — ducking, pivoting, changing and adapting, sometimes week to week, just to get our crackers and gift bags out of Kabul and into your hands.

Planning for 2027: Splitting Production With India

Here's the part we need to share We can't responsibly plan around a border and port situation that remains this closed and this unpredictable — so rather than wait and hope, we're acting now. For 2027, we'll be splitting a portion of our production with a team in India, giving us a second, steadier route to get products to you alongside our Kabul workshop. The USA will be supplied from India. The UK will be supplied from Afghanistan. A decision is still to be made regarding Australia and NZ. 

This isn't a decision we've made lightly, and it isn't a replacement for the women in Kabul who've sewn every one of our crackers and bags for years — it's about building in some breathing room so that one closed border doesn't mean one very stressful Christmas, for us or for them.

We're Still Here

None of this has been easy, and if you've noticed a price that's crept up this year, now you know why. But the sewing machines in Kabul haven't stopped, the crackers are still cracking, and the gift bags are still saving landfill from wrapping paper, one home at a time.

Thank you for sticking with us through a year of genuine swings and roundabouts. We're still here — ducking, pivoting, and figuring it out as we go, same as always.

Shop our 2026 reusable Christmas crackers and gift bags while stock lasts — and if you're in Australia, you'll find us at our NZ store this year.