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BANG FOR THE BITE
The average American gives 47 gifts each year. Adopt this tip, and that's 47 gift tags you won't have to buy.
COCKTAIL FACT
The top grossing Christmas movie of all time is 2000's How the Grinch Stole Christmas.
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home › tip library › Recycling Your Holiday Greeting Cards
Wondering what to do after your last (holiday) card reading?
The Bite
Reuse your greeting cards as gift tags. Call us psychic, but we're betting you're not planning to reread every single card you receive this holiday. Instead of stashing them in the attic to collect dust, grab some scissors and get crafty.The Benefits
- Save trees. Our crystal balls (and industry stats) predict that about 90% of all US households will buy greeting cards, but few will be recycled.
- One-of-a-kind gift tags are a great personal touch when you're giving presents.
- Save money - you'll never buy another gift tag again, boxes of which go for $2-$15.
- An artful lesson in reusing for the kids. Just grab some pinking shears and give the kiddos a right brain workout.
Personally Speaking
Jen used to make greeting cards from scratch until her friends started insinuating that their fridges were already covered in pictures of The Crick. Now she hopes that they all come back to her in the form of gift tags on her Christmas gifts (hint, hint).Wanna Try?
- Crinkle-Cut Craft Scissors - not eco, but they're fun for kids and adults ($20).
- KleenEarth Scissors - with 70% recycled plastic handles ($7).
- KleenEarth Children's Safety Scissors - 70% recycled handles and will work for lefties, too ($2).
- Ideal Bite's Greeting Cards Tip - when thinking about buying cards, think recycled.
Dec 18,2006
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All editorial suggestions in this tip are the result of testing and a preference for the tip topic. No advertiser has paid to have its company referenced in the tip. For more information, please read our Editorial Policy.
It’s True, My Cards Feature the Cricks
Biter Comments...
Well I either get recycled cards if not cards that I buy in Thrift Shops (they are cheaper and usually you can find some good ones) or cards from associations like the National Wildlife Federation or WWF or Children in Need...Whatever you do go for..it helps a lot!
Not surprisingly, I'm not a holiday card guy (like 99.6% of guys I know). Yes, there does seem to be a 0.4% of guys who love that stuff (I'll never understand). I just call, visit or email whoever around the holidays...but mostly my friends and family just know I'll see them when I see them.
Where cards are a must, I (for the first time ever) hand-painted a watercolor card for the Girlfriend. While results may vary depending on the girlfriend, this I recommend! Highly! :)
Last year we made our own cards with a photo booth photo on the front. Each photo had us holding a different sign.
Merry. Christmas. From. Joel and Scott.
Looked great and it was fun to do!
For decades/generations my family has reused Christmas cards the next year by simply cutting off the personalized back and then laying the whole card on the front of the package with to/from info written somewhere discreet and the whole thing secured with the ribbon.
Then those really beautiful cards get seen again - in their entirety.
The KleenEarth Scissors promote a 70% recycled content with 0% postconsumer. Postconsumer content is what we're striving for. (Post industrial is like efficient manufacturing, reusing your own scraps. Some people don't even consider it recycling at all and catagorize it as greenwash, or green brainwashing.) Sorry if I sound like a recycling snob, but I won't be going out of my way to purchase these scissors with no postconsumer content. Thanks for trying to raise the level of consciousness on the issue, though.
Just like Tannis, we've used Christmas cards on packages for the next year.
We also let our three kids cut the shapes out of the Christmas cards and either hang them on the tree (yes, a fake tree - we've put it up for years and think it a wiser choice than cutting a new one each year).
You can make garlands out of them to hang over windows, doorways, down bannisters, etc...
We've cut out pretty borders on cards, affixed stick-on magnets on the back and used them to frame out Christmas pics on the frig.
One year we went through our past Christmas cards we never sent out and for those we had at least a pair of, we put in a 'deck' for a memory game with our youngest (at that time, age 4).
Christmas cards go a long way.
For the past five or six years I have taken our Christmas cards to one of the local nursing homes and they use them to make laminated placemats and for numerous other crafts and they are so very happy for the donation.
Steve, I see your thought, but I gotta disagree.
Sure, post-consumer's more likely to go directly landfills...but post-industrial waste is still waste if left unused. Sure, you can pre-cycle (in my business, pre-cut studs, etc...), but if we take the focus off post-industrial, then I'd argue there's a chance that post-"industrial" passes post-"consumer" on its way to the landfill. Think concrete fly ash. If we didn't "recycle" that into a portland replacement for concrete, that'd go right to our landfills. There's really no "consumer" aspect to slag or fly ash.
Just my thought.
PHOTO ALBUMS
Posted by: Laura Friesen-Lynn | December 17, 2006 at 02:43 PM