Choosing An Eco-Friendly Card Company

Welcome eco-warrior! Are you looking to choose an eco-friendly card company to buy from? Here is our guide on what to look for in an eco card company. We cover the products, processes and people behind ethical cards, so you can choose a brand that fits your values. 

What’s important to you?

The first thing to do is consider what is important to you when choosing an eco-friendly card company. Everybody comes to environmental causes in a different way, so find a company that matches your principles. You may care deeply about animals (We hope that includes us pandas ;)), others reducing waste is their top priority. You may simply have a burning desire to help the planet however you can and reduce your impact where necessary. Understanding your priorities and principles can help you decide whether a company is the right one to shop with.

Eco-friendly Card Company Practices

When choosing an eco-friendly card company, you can look at the products they sell, how they are made and how else they try to reduce their impact on the planet. Let’s take a look at each area to help you decide. 

Eco-friendly materials

If you are on the hunt for eco-friendly greeting cards, how they are made and what they are made from may be a priority. Traditional greeting cards can damage the environment if they contain plastic, toxic dyes, use virgin trees or cannot be recycled. For a more sustainable alternative, look for an eco-friendly card company that follows one or all of these in their making. 

Tree-free

Chopping down new trees to make greeting cards feels a bit wasteful when it is an incredibly precious resource. Instead, look for tree-free options that use more sustainable natural materials. Cotton, bamboo, hemp and even sugar cane are sustainable paper matertials. They can help reduce carbon in the atmosphere and protect biodiversity when grown sustainably.

Plastic-free and non-toxic paint 

Avoid cards that contain plastic such as glitter, metallic decorations or plastic film packaging. This makes them impossible to recycle. When we say avoid toxic paint, they usually aren’t toxic to people, but their production and disposal release chemicals that can damage ecosystems and the environment.   

Sustainable Practices

Another aspect of an eco-friendly card company is if they use sustainable practices in production and transportation. When talking about protecting the earth, how a product is made is as vital as what it is made from.  Look for a card brand that has qualifications or certificates in environmental areas. The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC) are the most well-known forest management certifications. A card company with these certifications have responsible resourcing supply chains. This means their paper and card come from forests that are managed in an environmentally responsible and socially beneficial way. 

Another sustainable practice that can significantly affect a greeting card’s impact is the energy used to produce it. Does the card company or their manufacturer use renewable energy? Are they shipped in an environmentally conscious way? Do they reuse and recycle their packaging? While there can be a lot to think about when selecting a green product, these questions can hold companies accountable and hopefully make the world a better place. A task we at Panda Joy will gladly get behind. 

Treats Both People & Planet Right

While eco-friendly card companies probably promote their green credentials front and centre, we believe that ethical practices need to extend to people too. It’s no good saving us pandas if you put people in harm's way at the same time. We all have to share the planet together. So, one other thing to look for when selecting an eco-friendly card brand is to see how they treat suppliers and workers. Do they pay a living wage, use FairTrade labour orsupport charities that benefit communities involved in the process? It’s better for everyone when we work together and help each other have happier lives. 

Choose Panda Joy as your eco-friendly Card Company

We like to consider ourselves a very eco-friendly card company, but you be the judge. Panda Joy continues to improve its products and processes where possible, but here are some of the things we’ve achieved so far.

• We are 100% tree-free, using only bamboo and cotton linters to make oureco-friendly greeting cards.
• All of our cards are plastic-free, acid-free, biodegradable and recyclable.
• Our paper mill manufacturer is FSC certified. The bamboo and cotton linters we use for making Panda Joy cards meet the required ethical production of the Forest Stewardship Council.
• The manufacturing mill that supplies our raw materials usesEKOenergy-labelled electricity for its sustainable paper production.
• A third of our profits go to charities that are making the world a better place. We supportMicroLoan Foundation,Lend with care andEcologiin helping to preserve the planet and spreading joy to communities.