How to Send Sustainable Christmas Cards

At Pure Earth Pets, we work hard to help you create a happy, healthy, environmentally friendly life for your dog. The goal of our blog is to help you learn more about reducing your dog’s carbon pawprint with eco-friendly choices. But we also like to help you navigate the other aspects of day-to-day life where you can make eco-friendly choices. In this blog post, we will help you brainstorm ways to send sustainable Christmas cards to your family and friends this year. 

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle your Christmas Cards

Although the popularity of Christmas cards has been declining, they are still a beloved holiday tradition. Although there are many digital options to save paper and resources, they do not elicit the same sort of warm, loving feeling as receiving a card in the mail. 

Reducing the number of recipients on your Christmas card list will help both your wallet and your carbon footprint. Reducing the resources that you use is the single most effective way of becoming more environmentally friendly. If you have friends and neighbors who you will see in person over the holiday season at parties and events or even on walks around the neighborhood, you can wish them Merry Christmas in person and leave them off your holiday card list. These criteria can also be applied to co-workers and people in your day-to-day life. 

Keep older relatives who do not spend as much time on social media on your list of card recipients, as well as good friends who live in other parts of the country. They will appreciate that you thought about them during this season of love and cheer. This way you can put your budget and your creativity toward ecofriendly options that are more special or and personalized. 

Reusing old Christmas cards is one of the best ways to be eco-friendly during the holidays. Reusing items and giving them new life is the second most effective way of living an environmentally friendly lifestyle. Of course, you don’t want to send out someone else’s personalized cards with their family photos, but you can repurpose cards that feature artwork instead of family photos. You can use the front part of the card and turn it into a postcard or embrace your crafty side and make it into a brand-new card. Turning the card into a post-card will also reduce the need for an envelope, cutting your paper usage even more. 

Understand which materials are recyclable when purchasing cards to send and when discarding the cards you receive. Recyling is the last resort in terms of helping conserve natural resources, but it is perhaps the most well-known. However, many people do not know what can be recycled and what cannot. In many locations, putting something that cannot be recycled into the recycling bin can often make the entire batch of recycling be unusable. 

Materials like glitter, ribbons, and shiny paper cannot be recycled. The trend for many years has been to send photo cards. Most of the shiny, inexpensive photo postcards are not recyclable, nor are they printed on recycled paper. 

Instead of sending photo cards to people who see all your photos throughout the year on social media, consider choosing an eco-friendly greeting card so that the recipient can recycle it when they are done. If you like, you can include a photo for grandparents and other family members who will want to save the photo for years to come.

Seed Cards

Seed cards are a really fun alternative to traditional Christmas cards. Seed paper is paper that is made with actual seeds that can still germinate after going through the paper-making process. Recipients of seed cards can plant the entire card in a pot of dirt. The card will disintegrate, and the seeds will grow flowers, vegetables, or herbs, depending what type of seeds are in the paper. We recommend checking out Bloomin, Botanical Paperworks, and Free the Ocean for holiday greeting cards made of seed paper. 

Sustainable Christmas Card Brands We Love

Most mainstream card companies print cards on paper that is partially made of post-consumer recycled paper. Post-consumer recycled paper is made from paper that households and offices recycle. Although using 20 or 30% of recycled paper is a step in the right direction, that still means that most of the paper comes from new paper. And of course, new paper means newly chopped trees. We have found several places to purchase cards made of 100% post-consumer recycled paper. This means that zero new trees were needed to spread holiday cheer!  

Paper Culture Pet Cards 

https://www.paperculture.com/eco/pet-cards

Paper Culture is a card company with an eco-friendly mission. Their cards are printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper, and they work to ensure that all businesses processes are eco-friendly. One of the best parts about ordering from Paper Culture is that they plant a tree for every purchase. According to their website, they have planted over 1,000,000 trees. We love the adorable designs in their pet themed holiday collection. 

Twigs Paper

https://www.twigspaper.com/note-card-sets 

In addition to using 100% recycled paper, Twigs Paper also uses paper that is either unbleached or bleached without harmful chemicals. They use soy and algae inks and non-toxic toners for their printing. Although they do not offer pet-themed holiday cards, we love their mission and the assortment of sustainable note cards that you can personalize for the holidays. 

Green Field Paper Company

https://www.greenfieldpaper.com/AWSCategories/c/121/HOLIDAY-COLLECTION 

Green Field Paper Company is committed to making cards and stationery with 100% tree-free paper. According to their website, they offer “three proprietary lines of innovative recycled papers that integrate post-consumer pulp with non-traditional additives such as seeds, hemp, coffee chaff, denim, junk mail, and garlic skins.” You can choose from holiday cards made on seed paper, hemp, or recycled junk mail. 

Do you have a creative, eco-friendly holiday card that you are sending to loved ones this year? You don’t need to send one to us, but feel free to share your photos on Instagram or Facebook! We love to hear from you.