What If Clients Expect a Card? Can You Do It Green? - Recycled Holiday Cards

This is a guest post by John Simonetta, owner ofProforma Green, an eco-friendly promotional items consultancy. John’s blogs are designed to keep us up to date on the “greening” of his industry.

It is October and in the promotional products industry that means it is time to start talking about holiday cards.

Most companies find holiday cards a great way to show appreciation to their best clients or to send a special thank you to their employees.

Most green purists will likely say skip the card, save a tree and send email instead. The problem is that a lot of clients expect cards.

So what to do?

Well industry leaders like Carlson Craft and DFS are stepping into the breach with cards printed on recycled paper. Often this includes a recycled envelope as well and a number of items can be printed with soy or vegetable based inks.

And there is a lot of choice this year. A key word search for recycled on our greeting card website returns over 150 cards to choose from with 30% post-consumer fibers or better.

If you’re in the industry, you might also choose to contact a green printer like Jim Fairbairn at www.independentprinting.com and have a card or even shipping materials built from scratch of 100% post-consumer and/or Forest Stewardship Council certified paper - Jim’s email is This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. Heck I suspect independent could even run 100% recycled custom wrapping paper if you were so inclined.

But seriously, the first step is to be creative and cut your client mailing list down as much as possible. Email and e-cards are likely fine for many clients. But if you do need to send a real card please think about a recycled product.

I would like to see some comments on this post of other ideas green companies can use during the holidays to say thank you to their clients while keeping with their eco-friendly philosophy.