Holiday Cards: Eco Options

If you are shopping for holiday cards this year, think
about the environment. If you would like to do your part to avoid
cutting down more trees and all the energy consumed through the process, there are
a few ways to tackle this:

(1) Forget
tree-made paper all together. Think cotton, bamboo, rice, coconut, hemp.
There are paper alternatives much more readily available this year then
there were a few years ago. This
year I designed a simple text-only holiday card, saved it as a jpeg, ordered 100% cotton paper from www.Paper-Papers.com (Crane &
Co. brand — http://www.neenahpaper.com/cranepaper/green1.html
), and they are being printed at my local printers as I type this. Let’s
hope they’re using non-toxic ink. www.GreenFieldPaper.com in San
Diego has some great tree-free paper options, many of which contain seeds
so you can plant the cards. 

(2) If you’re choosing tree
paper go for 100% post-consumer recycled cards and
envelopes. InviteSite.com has some unique options: http://www.invitesite.com/holidays/holiday-cards.php 

(3) If you
are less traditional and have decided to forgo snail mail holiday cards,
there are so many fun sites that offer card options. Wow, what a
time-saver. What would you do with all of those minutes or hours saved
addressing, signing, stamping, sealing, and sending cards out? Instead,
you can click click type type your way thorough, hit send, and know you
touched each of your family and friends (who use email, that is) via their
inbox. A couple good sites are www.evite.com
, www.hallmark.com, and www.mypunchbowl.com. Many of the
e-card options are free and you can send to multiple recipients.

(4) If you
prefer to get crafty, you and your family can make ornaments as cards for
everyone using found goods, last year’s card, or anything from around the
house. For example, cut up old magazines into star shapes, glue a few
pages together to thicken up the paper, add a tie at the top, write
to/from on there and you’re good to send out in a 100% recycled envelope
of course.

nparkington | My Bio & Articles

Natalie lives in San Diego, California and enjoys a healthy organic vegetarian lifestyle (with chocolate as the exception...). She does what she can for the environment and is constantly making adjustments to become greener in all...