Eco-friendly cards
So many of us try to be ecofriendly for much of the year, sorting our recyclables, making sustainable choices and going green whenever possible.
Then comes the holiday season, and all of that goes out the window in favor of colorful packages topped with foil bows, elaborately greeting cards and fancy gift bags.
Simply put, it’s not the most wonderful time of the year for the environment, as millions embrace non-recyclable products that leave sizable footprints on the planet. In fact, Americans produce an additional 7 million pounds of waste between Thanksgiving and New Year’s day — for a total of 25 million tons of garbage over those five weeks — according to the Peninsula Sanitary Service and Stanford Recycling Center, Palo Alto, Calif.
That’s why there’s often a twinge of guilt that comes from opening gifts, as we looks at all the colorful waste lying on the floor.
Yet there are ways to make the gift-giving experience more ecofriendly. And many of them have to do with the way we package and present that new tie/toaster/ TV to our loved ones.
Typically wrapping paper can’t be recycled, due to the heavy amounts of dye, laminate, glitter and other materials used in its creation. That translates to hundreds of thousands of miles’ worth of wrapping paper thrown away each holiday season. Yet there are some eco-friendly alternatives, one of which comes courtesy of the Hawaii-based company Wrappily.
“The burden of the waste of gift wrap is what drove me to found my business and kind of innovate this greener model for wrapping
Go green this season by repurposing your paper scraps into bows, trimmings and other decorations.
paper,” says Sarah Smith, founder.
Departing from the industry norm, Wrappily shuns additives and uses newsprint for its paper. Its products can be recycled in the same way as newspapers. “The benefit is that it is 100 percent recyclable,” said Smith. “Newspapers are recycled everywhere. They are the most widely accepted recyclable material. Humble newsprint (is) like a rock star when it comes to wrapping paper, because the fiber can actually be broken down and recycled up to seven times.”
For more information about Wrappily products, visit wrappily.com.
The same rules for picking ecofriendly wrapping paper apply to the cards, too. “The tip I can give to your readers is… to avoid cards with glitter or foil embellishment,” says Mackenzie Jeans, “anything that has that kind of material on it makes it not recyclable. Sticking to your regular card stock is the best way to go … to be eco-friendly.”
Jeans is the president of Allport editions in Portland. The company, which got its start in San Francisco, works to reduce scrap (by using entire paper sheets) and recycles all of its waste. It also prints with veggie-based inks and uses sustainable-harvest pulp for its paper.
“Recycled content is a really great thing, and it’s not standard,” Jeans says. “If you see anything that says it contains recycled content, then you know that company went out of its way to make sure its papers included recycled content.”
For more information, visit www.allport.com.