Love sending cards, but not the waste that comes with it? Do you wish you could share your good wishes with family and friends more sustainably? Look no further – after exhaustive research we’ve come up with the most eco-friendly cards we can devise!
The card and envelope are made from 100% UK recycled material, the inks are non-toxic, water-based and vegan. No plastic sleeve is used. Supplied with a recycled brown envelope. Each card is individually printed in the UK by hand and best of all, for every card printed a small donation is made to the Marine Conservation Society.
Blue Snowflake card = £2 per card.
All other designs = £2.50 per card.
Handmade Charity Lino Print Cards
Mass-produced cards made of wood pulp from unprotected and unsustainably managed forests. Many commercially available cards do not have the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) stamp to show that the paper is sourced from sustainably managed forests. White coloured cards are chemically bleached adding hazardous chemicals to the environment.
Paper bleaching used to be a huge source of pollution, as paper mills used a chlorine heavy bleaching process that emitted, amongst other effluents, dioxins, which are toxic and persistent organic pollutants that are heavily damaging to the environment. Bleaching processes have improved over the years, and much less chlorine is used, but some environmental pollutants are still released by this process. Recycled paper is either unbleached or uses much less bleach than needed for virgin paper products. The bleaching process used when making recycled paper whiter often uses hydrogen peroxide as an alternative to chlorine, as this doesn’t produce the damaging chlorine-based pollutants.
The ink on the majority of mass-produced cards is composed of either soy-based oils or a heavy petroleum distillate combined with organic pigments.
The single-use plastic sleeves are not widely recycled and will last in the environment longer than either the sender or recipient of the card - even if it’s their 100th birthday!
Something else to consider is the conditions under which these cards are made. Many cards come from factories where working conditions are of the lowest consideration. A news story which illustrates this broke in December 2019 - It was reported that a young girl had found a plea for help from a prisoner in a forced labour camp in China… written inside the charity Christmas card she had bought from Tesco.
