We are all being reminded to be kinder to the environment. Recycle, reuse and reduce is the key mantra for all concerned about living a more sustainable life. Although many people associate the advance of technology with a less sustainable way of life, there are actually many ways that we can actually eliminate some of the products that are detrimental to the environment. E cards are just one example of how we can reduce the waste we produce.

Whether it is a birthday, anniversary or a major event in the social calendar, sending a card makes someone feel special. It is part of a culture where families and friends often live miles apart, but sending greetings cards uses up a lot of energy, and creates quite a carbon footprint from production to posting through a letter box, not to mention using up space in a landfill if it is not recycled.

It has been estimated that around 200,000 trees need to be cut down just to produce enough Christmas cards and envelopes for the UK alone. This can be reduced by making homemade cards from old greeting cards, scraps of paper and magazines. Reusing paper that is already in circulation increases its longevity, and ideally, the more a product can be reused before it is recycled, the better it is for the environment.

In the effort to minimise waste, recycling paper is effective. It can be made into toilet roll, packing and card board amongst many items. However, recycling still requires energy; another method of dealing with waste paper is by composting. Adding card and paper products to a compost mixture helps the organic fermentation process as it is easily biodegradable, saving energy through recycling and space in landfill sites.

To eliminate the need to reuse, recycle or compost paper products, we can make use of technology at our fingertips. Deciding to send an e card to mark a celebration or special event not only saves trees from being cut down, it saves energy used in paper production, fuel used in transportation and the dilemma over what to do with the waste.

In fact, many e cards are linked to a carbon offset programme, which means that each time a person sends an e card, the amount of carbon that has been saved is logged. When it comes to a total of around one billion Christmas cards in the UK, if each one was an e card, 20,000 tonnes of waste would be prevented from entering landfills, and around 3.6 billion GBP would be saved on postage costs. Saving the planet has never been more cost effective!

Dom Donaldson is an environment expert.
Find out more about E Cards and do your bit to offset carbon emissions today at Katies Cards.

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 18th, 2009 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Consumer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.