Doing our bit

Greeting cards are, in the grand scheme of things, gloriously unnecessary. Which is exactly why it matters what they are made of.

This is everything the cards and the packaging are made from, and what to do with each of them afterwards. No claims that need taking on trust: where something is a compromise, it says so.

The cards

Uncoated board, thick enough to stand on a mantelpiece without folding over. Uncoated means the ink sits in the surface rather than on top of it, so the colour looks flat and solid and the card feels like paper rather than plastic.

• FSC® certified
• Elemental chlorine free
• Unlaminated
• Recyclable in your kerbside paper collection

Why there is no foil or lamination

Because both are plastic, and both stop a card being recycled. A laminated card is paper bonded to a film that a paper mill cannot separate, so the whole thing is contamination. Foil is the same problem in a smaller area.

Shiny finishes sell. They photograph well and they read as expensive, and giving them up costs something. What you get instead is a card that goes in the paper recycling with the cereal boxes.

The envelopes

Coloured, plain, no window and no lining. Paper the whole way through, so they go in with the card.

• Recyclable
• No plastic window
• No foil lining

The sleeve

Cards need protecting in the post and on a shelf, so each one goes in a clear sleeve. It is polypropylene: the same stuff as a bread bag.

I used a plant-based one before this. It cost five times as much, it scratched if you looked at it, and it was only compostable in an industrial facility, which in practice meant almost every one of them went in a bin. This one is honest about being plastic and actually gets recycled, which is the better outcome even though it reads worse.

Where it goes: soft plastic recycling, with the bread bags and crisp packets. Most supermarkets collect it at the front of store. Kerbside collection for plastic film was due to start in March 2027, but the government has moved that to 2030, so for now it is a trip to the supermarket rather than your recycling bin. The peel-off seal strip is the same material, so the whole thing goes in together.

The packaging

Everything an order arrives in, from the outer to the paper tape, is recyclable. No plastic wrap, no void fill, no printing on the outside to give away what is inside.

The website

Hosted with Krystal, who run on renewable energy. The shop loads no advertising scripts and no third-party trackers, which is mostly a privacy decision but does mean there is a good deal less to download.

Where this is not perfect

The sleeve is plastic. Royal Mail vans are not electric. A card is still a thing you buy, look at once and eventually throw away, and no amount of certification changes that.

What I can do is keep the materials simple enough that every part of it has somewhere to go. If you spot something here that could be better, tell me.