Valentine's Day: go green or go online
Home » Blog » Guests » Valentine's Day: go green or go onlineBefore buying a Valentine's Day card for your partner, lover or secret crush (or all three), read our guide to choosing an eco-friendly greeting card.
Valentine's Day e-card from the excellent Some E-cards
Billions of paper greeting cards are bought and sold every year. Despite the introduction of e-cards in the 90s, there seems to be no slowing up on consumption.
In the US and UK, the average person buys around 30 cards a year. American consumers purchase approximately seven billion greeting cards annually and in the UK, over two billion. If aligned end-to-end, nine billion cards would stretch around the world 54 times (nearly 2.2 million kilometres). Given similar buying habits, the Australasian greeting card sales is guesstimated to be around one billion cards a year.
To meet these three countries' greeting card markets alone over 312,000 trees (78,000 tonnes of paper) is needed, and that’s just the card—never mind the envelope. Add to that inks, dyes, glues, postage, fuels consumed in manufacturing and distribution, and it seems like madness to continue this tradition at a time where every little bit helps both environmentally and financially.
So why do we continue this age-old tradition?
Greeting cards may date back to the ancient Chinese and the Egyptians who sent greetings via papyrus scrolls, but the first documented evidence is in the late Middle Ages, when messages of love were exchanged at Valentines Day.
The first commercial card was made in the UK in 1846. With the introduction of the postage stamp, greeting cards surged in popularity and were being mass-produced in the UK and US by the late 1870s. Aggressive marketing throughout the twentieth century has resulted in a plethora of greeting cards for any event or holiday imaginable.
Receiving greeting cards is part of our psyche. We don’t send paper cards without good reason; we seldom receive without them meaning something. The have higher emotional value than e-cards, and most people prefer the old-fashioned handwritten card or letter to make them feel truly special.
If you’re inclined to stick with traditional card-buying there are some things you can do to lessen the environmental impact.
1. Go Green
Make environmentally friendly shopping choices and buy cards that are manufactured using recycled paper. There are various levels of recycled content; the higher the better:
- Good: The greeting card mentions recycled content
- Better: The greeting card makes a claim of "100% recycled paper"
- Best: The greeting card makes a claim of "100% recycled paper" with "100% post-consumer content (PCC)".
Another environmental plus to look for is chlorine-free paper. Look for recycled cards from Recycled Paper Greetings (the world's fourth-largest greeting card company), Duo Publishing (made in NZ) and MessageMark (made in Australia).
2. Recycle
Cards are easily re-used. The World Environment Organisation has a few creative suggestions:
- Use them as a bookmarks
- Make them into a gift tag by cutting the old card into a smaller shape
- Cut off the side with the picture (if there is no writing on the reverse side) and re-use it as a post card
- Donate to schools and kindergartens, they are a great resource for children’s art
- If you have to dump them, use your recycle bin.
3. Only buy cards you'll use
Do not buy more than you need. Draft out your message before committing it to the card, avoiding mistakes.
4. Go electronic
On the emotional flipside of the greeting business, gazillions of e-cards are sent every day. But no matter how much someone loves you, the majority of people don’t want the cards they received because the “rules of specialness” have been ignored.
Here are my "rules of specialness” regarding the sending and receiving of e-cards:
- Save it for a real occasion and be selective
- Take as much time and thought into selecting the right e-card as you would at the bookstore for a paper card
- If you can’t do the above, then don’t send an e-card
- When you have received an e-card of value, that makes you feel good, acknowledge the sender and thank them
The same principles apply to other quirky emails. Don’t forward for the sake of it. I don’t like my mailbox jammed and my bandwidth consumed with this kind of mail.
Compulsive senders! Remember that if you overuse e-card services you’ll ruin the opportunity to use e-cards to your financial advantage without looking cheap. Use e-cards sparingly. It will mean so much more.
Sun February 14, 2010 @ 11:29 PM
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