Recycled Greeting Cards

These days, everything is made from recycled materials: cardboard boxes, toilet paper, houses, used cars, used car salesmen, and a whole host of other everyday items. In fact, while perusing the greeting card aisle in the grocery store lately, I happened upon a rack of recycled greeting cards. Now, you may be thinking, what’s so odd about recycled greeting cards? They’re made of paper, after all. But these are not just greeting cards made from recycled paper, they are actual recycled greeting cards.

In the quest for a sustainable future, at least one company is taking strides that place it far beyond the competition. London Greetings, Ltd., is recycling the entire greeting card with the original buyer’s handwritten message intact and repackaging it in a sustainable, reusable plastic greeting card package, which shows customers how they can be responsible for the good of Future Generations™.¹

This is “re-gifting”² at its best—take one useless and overpriced present, give it to someone who doesn’t want it, and then let a total stranger pay for it again and give it to someone else who doesn’t want it, and so on.

Whether you go to their chic downtown shop in the West End or browse their cards at your local grocer, you will find a wide assortment of London Greetings cards for all occasions, with a variety of hand-written messages inside. For instance, you can find Christmas cards with

“Jolly Christmas, Mum! Hope you like the fruitcake!
Love, Cynthia”

which is perfect for anyone named Cynthia to send with the Christmas fruitcake. Or, if you are a Liam, you can buy

“Happy Anniversary, Honey-dear!
Love and kisses, Liam.”

They even have a sympathy section so you can avoid writing that all-too-uncomfortable card to someone mourning a loved one’s death. I myself bought one with a picture of a mauve sailboat that reads:

Dear Bob,
I’m so sorry to hear about the death of your wife Claire. What a wonderful woman she was! She lived a full life, and yet she died far too soon! The world will certainly miss her, and life just won’t be the same for anyone. But you were so lucky to have her, and I know you cherish the memories now more than ever.
With much sympathy,
-Jim

This was perfect when my friend and coworker Bob lost his wife Claire. And they made it so easy to find, as the cards are categorised by “To” name, “From” name, and “About” name. There were several others in the “To Bob, From Jim, About Claire” group,³ but this was the best-written, so I snagged it. And the best part is, while it cost the same amount as a regular greeting card, this one was already written, so all I had to do was put it in an envelope and send it to Bob.

So next time you need a greeting card, try the recycled ones. And don’t forget, you can reuse the reusable plastic greeting card package for any other greeting cards you need to package.⁴

This includes Generation Z, Generation AA, Generation ABC, Generation mc², Generation π, as well as Post-Millennials, Anti-Post-Millenials, Intra-Extra-Interpol-Millennials, Congenial Remillennials, Eonals, and other so-far-unnamed generations whose existence has yet to be determined. ↩
The Flying News hereby protests the use of the word “gift” as a verb, because it is actually Ye Olde Englishe past participle of the verb “give”, that is a “thing given”, as in the Latin “giveo, givere, gimme, giftum”. Therefore, this is the only time you will every read us using the word “gift” as a verb, and it is only to appease the populace of under-educated masses. ↩
Which was actually a surprise, since “Bob” is not that common a nickname here in England. ↩
As long as they’re the same size. ↩