Enviromental Info
You can't be a paper goods company if you don't give a tits about the very source of your base material.
Here are some things we do at The Sweary Card Co to limit the impact we have on the environment.
- We plant a tree for every single order you place. If you'd like more information on this, please get in touch at hello@theswearycardco.com
- We use a 100% recycled card and all offcuts are also recycled. If you happen to receive a card from our 2021 stock, it won't be 100% recycled board, but the manufacturers of these used carbon neutral presses, solar powered warehousing and recycled all consumable press elements.
- The vast majority of our cards are sent naked. This means they are not enclosed in a plastic cellophane wrapper. You may occasionally receive a wrapped card and this is likely because it is older stock that has been received packed. We could take them out of the wrapping and claim to be plastic free, but that's bullshit and does just as much damage when we throw them out.
- All our mailers are able to be recycled. Our full board mailers are actually certified plastic free and the manufacturers have additional environmental accreditations. This extends to most of our packaging too. Almost all gifts are packaging in recycled tissue paper, securing stickers are paper based and if we need to 'pack out' the container your order is shipped in, we re-use materials that have arrived with our own business and even personal online orders.
- We do not have our mailbags collected by Royal Mail. We are very fortunate to operate from a location extremely close to a Post Office and therefore walk all our bags over, no matter how many trips it takes. Transparency here is that if we have a ton of bags, it's hammering down and we need to drive, we will always try our best to time the drop off with an already planned journey.
- On top of planting a tree for every order, we also have a monthly commitment that plants enough trees to offset nearly a whole ton of CO2.
It's no good just telling you about all the good stuff. We believe in being open when it comes to doing our best. So here's a few things we don't like, but are working hard to change.
- We still use some plastic. We currently have approximately 10 rolls of plastic based tape that we use for sealing boxed orders. As mentioned above, we also have some cards that are still in cellophane wrapping and a large amount of our trade orders also prefer wrapped cards.
- We use cellophane wrapping on our smaller prints and the plastic cap on the ends of our postal tubes isn't ideal.
Our thoughts on those bad points are that it doesn't make sense to throw away the plastic tape or cello bags, because that is just as wasteful. It's better to use up these bits for their intended purpose and then replace them with environmentally friendly options when we run out. Same goes for postal tubes and we aim to replace them with fully recyclable tubes once current stock runs out and we find an alternative that is just as protective.
As for retailers, we have to understand that the protective sleeves are important for small boutiques and independent stores. They are not buying in the same quantities as huge supermarkets and big box stores and cannot always afford to take a hit if stock becomes damaged when customers inevitably drop or mis-handle cards. However, we do plant a further 10 trees for every single trade order to further help offset this.
If you have any questions, or want to throw an idea out there about how we can do better. Please send an email to hello@theswearycardco.com