Reduce Footprints asked us to send an ecard this week to a friend for our “Change the world Wednesday” challenge.

With Valentine’s Day coming up, what better way to declare your love and show your love for the planet at the same time?

According to the Greeting Card Association, American consumers purchase 7 billion greeting cards each year. In the UK, we get buy over 2 billion cards. If these cards were aligned end-to-end, they would stretch around the world 54 times. And that’s only from 2 countries in the world!

It requires a lot of paper, ink and energy to produce a card. More often than not the paper and envelopes are made from virgin materials and the inks are toxic. After being on show for a couple of weeks on the mantlepiece, many cards end up in landfill.

To get the cards from the printers to the shops requires energy and produces carbon emissions.

The next best thing is to send a recycled card or make your own, but if you want to be super eco friendly, e-cards are the way to go.

Some companies are better than others and one of my favourites is Jacquie Lawson.

Jacquie originally trained as an illustrator at St. Martin’s School of Art, and has over twenty years’ experience of working freelance in many areas of drawing, painting and design, including architectural perspectives, book illustration, and cartoons.

There is a small subscription to pay, but all the cards are top quality, animated with music and take a minute or so to complete, so you get real value for money.
In addition there is no advertising or flashing banners to clog up your bandwith! For kids there are Pelmanism memory games, which have lead to hours of entertainment for Little miss green in the past.

I have to admit, it’s taken me a while to get used to the idea of ecards; I used to think of them as a second rate substitute, but for eco friendly friends who understand the sentiment, I think they are great as long as you choose a good company and don’t go for the naff ones covered in adverts.

What about you - do you send ecards or are you still a paper and card person?

Click on the image below for Jacquie’s Card of the month!

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