Recycle your Christmas cards

Throughout January you can recycle your Christmas cards at Tesco and WH Smith.

Personally, I liked this xmas message from Joi Ito:

"I'm not sending any Christmas or New Years cards this year because I don't want to kill any more trees (and I'm lazy). I'm not sending email greetings because mass mailings are becoming indistinguishable from spam... For the more personal touch, I'm relying on my birthday reminder to remind me to say hi to my friends in a way that distributes the work across the year."

I'm currently doing neither, preferring to greet people face to face. But I think it's an excellent idea to use birthdays (if you can remember them) as a more personal way of catching up with your more remote friends anually. Keep xmas special for the family and/or local community.

We should not assume that cards need to be a part of the equation. We know who really benefits from all this waste, and it's not you or me, nor the Earth which supports us. Of course it's slightly different if you buy your cards from a charity, but there are other ways to help or donate to a good cause without wasting tons of resources.