Sandra Dick: Is it time we were dreaming of a green christmas?

Published on Tuesday 27 October 2009 08:46

TRADITIONAL ones, funny ones, some rude ones and ones that light up and play Jingle Bells in an ear-piercingly shrill electronic cacophony as soon as you open them.

There are cute ones that are so small the envelope can hardly contain the stamp never mind an address. And there are giant ones and,

heavens above, some of them that even feature the word "Christmas".

They are, of course, Christmas cards, and this year, there are dire warnings that they could be at risk of becoming an endangered species.

It has been suggested that postal chaos, combined with increasing environmental awareness about the waste they create, could seriously dent a tradition rooted in 19th-century British culture.

And a question being asked in some quarters is: At a time of recession, can we really, collectively, afford to spend a staggering 324 million on them?

What is without question is that greetings card do hold a special place in the affections of the British, who send a little under a billion of them each year. We're simply doing what our grandparents, and their grandparents, did before us – following a much loved tradition dating from 1840s.

Edinburgh in fact stakes a claim to be the birthplace of the Christmas card, thanks to Leith printer Charles Drummond, who sold a series of Yuletide cards from his Kirkgate shop.

He was followed by Englishman John Horsley who was commissioned to make 1000 cards for civil servant Henry Cole.

In those days, though, there was no global warming to worry about or deforestation to fret over. So could ecologically aware consumers choose this year to heed the word of green campaigners?

Sharon Little of the Greeting Card Association believes, not surprisingly, that rumours of the death of the Christmas card are unfounded.

"Christmas cards are fairly firmly embedded in our national psyche," she insists. "We have a far greater culture of sending greetings cards in this country than anywhere else in the world – we send more cards per person than any other nation.

"It means much more to receive a card than just an e-mail – it's more personal when something arrives in the post, something you can open, that has a lovely design which someone has taken the time and effort to choose for you and to write," she adds.

The postal chaos, she believes, might not affect that many of us anyway: "Half of all Christmas cards are actually hand delivered," she adds.

However, the Woodland Trust, which works with Waste Aware Scotland at a major Christmas card recycling drive, estimates that if everyone in the UK recycled just one card, the charity would be able to plant 15,000 trees.

The statistics are striking: more than 200,000 trees are felled to make Christmas cards every year. And while many are ultimately recycled, increasing use of foil and glitter and glossy paper, make recycling more challenging every year.

Helen Darvill of Waste Aware Scotland, isn't expecting everyone to ditch the greeting card, but suggests attitudes might still be changing.

"People might want to reuse old cards, cut them up and turn them into next year's gift tags," she suggests. "And recycling cards means they can be turned into cardboard products and used again."

But Friends of the Earth Scotland would prefer if people simply ditched the cards altogether. "It is estimated that one billion Christmas cards are sent out each year," says Samantha Adderley, FOE Scotland's waste prevention project officer.

"To cut down on the waste created around the festive season, we encourage people to send Christmas e-cards.

But that does present its own dilemma – by buying charity Christmas cards we help boost funds of some of the most needy causes by a massive 50m every year. Whatever the future holds for the Christmas card – and the postal service – the Royal Mail is preparing for another bumper mailbag.

Should all go to plan, its 12,500 postmen and women in Scotland will handle more than 200 million items of mail over the Christmas period. Consumers have little alternative – the Scouts announced last month they are scrapping their traditional Christmas post service in Edinburgh and commercial rivals to the postal service operate on a much larger scale than most household's Christmas letters.

A Royal Mail spokesperson insisted plans are afoot to get all deliveries moving: "We will be running our usual Christmas operation at a unit in Bathgate, which is what we do every year to deal with the Christmas operation.

"We have a commitment to our customers to deliver their packets and parcels for Christmas."

NOBODY DOES IT BETTER

It's a very British tradition – for when it comes to Christmas cards, no-one does it quite like us.

Every year we receive an average of 31 Christmas cards each. And we're unique as no other country in the world has the same tradition of displaying cards in the home.

The Greeting Card Association estimates Christmas card sales to be worth 324m a year, and account for 43 per cent of all cards bought.

Many are charity cards, however a recent Which? report found that sometimes as little as six per cent of the price paid for the card actually gets to the good cause. Charities earn just 13 per cent on average of the cost of the cards sold by High Street retailers.

But if you're looking for a return on your investment, look to one of the first ever Christmas cards sent from inventor Sir Henry Cole to his grandmother, which sold recently for 22,500.