Time to stop sending out Christmas cards

WHY are you still sending Christmas cards?

It’s time to ban this outdated, wasteful festive pastime.

We know most people will see us as The Grinch trying to ruin Christmas, but unfortunately for our environment, the season creates a waste problem that lasts all year long.

The Christmas card tradition has had its day, and now it’s time to make eco-friendly choices.

It’s estimated about a billion cards are sent every year in the UK.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of these cards end up in landfill, as the widely recyclable cardboard is often contaminated with shiny and glittery decorations.

People seem to think that sending Christmas cards doesn’t do much harm to the environment because of the perception that all cardboard is easily recycled. However, this couldn’t be further from the truth.

People chuck their cards into the recycling bin, which causes havoc at recycling centres causing whole loads of paper to be dumped because it’s contaminated with glitter.

This problem is why leading retailers Waitrose, Morrisons, and John Lewis have banned glitter this year across their own-brand Christmas products, including cards and wrapping paper, as glitter can take hundreds of years to biodegrade.

Not only are Christmas cards awful for the environment, they cost you a small fortune, too, as the Christmas card industry in the UK worth £1.7 billion, higher than anywhere else in the world.

I bet you’ve never considered how much CO2 delivery trucks use to get card up to beloved Aunt Edith 400 miles away, while getting the billion other cards to the right addresses in the same month, too.

For most of us this year, sending a Christmas card is the closest contact we can offer.

So why not make your own cards? Ditch the glitter and get creative using items you might already have laying around your house from last Christmas.

Reach out to those you haven’t been able to see this year with a phone call, people will appreciate your time for a catch up much more than a card in the post.

Or send an e-card – for the more tech-savvy, why not send a personalised e-card to your friends and family, plus you can send these all around the world at no cost at all.

There are also eco-friendly cards – plenty of companies offer ecoalternatives to Christmas cards, just make sure they are from a sustainable source, and free from glitter, glue, and foil. And try to hand deliver as much as possible.

We need to start viewing Christmas cards as a single-use waste product, because that’s essentially what they are.

Once we start phasing them out and using alternatives, like we have with plastic bottles and straws, it’ll be much cheaper for us and far better for the planet, too.

Mark Hall, BusinessWaste.co.uk