The holidays are here and so are many of its traditions - sending and receiving greeting cards, personalizing and exchanging gifts, and partaking in the many cultural, global and family traditions. And at the center of it are the holiday stalwarts: paper and cardboard.
Can you really have the holidays without them?
When the gift-giving season ends, we are surrounded by the remnants of the holidays, including greeting cards, giftwrap and boxes, to name only a few. That is when the holiday guilt may set in.
That guilt about using paper and cardboard, particularly around the holidays, may be unwarranted.
It turns out, the U.S. paper industry doesn’t just care about paper, but also about the planet.
In fact, paper is one of the most sustainable materials around. It comes from a renewable resource –trees—and nearly twice the volume is replanted annually. Leading to the fact that more than 1 billion trees are planted in the U.S. each year. And it is not just the forests and trees that benefit, but the wildlife that live there.
To top that off, paper is one of the most recycled materials in the U.S. and can be recycled into new products up to seven times.
So, don’t sweat the holidays. The increased use of paper and cardboard is an important part of reaching sustainability. And the cycle of sustainability increases when we continue to recycle, reuse and upcycle.
By upcycling and reusing, we increase the festive spirit of the holidays and extend the life of paper and cardboard. We can even prepare ahead of time for the seasons that follow, like Spring gardening using baking scraps from the holidays.
When we use paper products like giftwrap and boxes, we are adding to the season of gift giving by giving a gift to Mother Nature as well.
