For over thirty years greeting card publishers have been proactive with ensuring the board they use comes from sustainable sources that are, in a sense, farmed crops of trees that are replanted in forests that are managed mindfully. FSC and PEFC accreditation both provide reassurance of this for consumers.
With the wide spread consumer backlash against plastic, many publishers and retailers alike have been unsure how best to proceed. As with climate change, some are still in denial about whether a problem even exists or anything needs to be done at all. Plastics and micro-plastics do damage our environment, harm wildlife and pollute the food chain.
The 90% drop in single-use carrier bags clearly demonstrates that the seven major supermarkets take the majority of consumer single-use plastic and it’s here that the biggest wins can and are being made. With most of nationals going naked with their cards, cello wrapped cards will soon account for less than a third of all UK greeting card sales.
Not all retailers want unwrapped cards though, as many worry about damaged stock, which is also wasteful and environmentally unfriendly. For publishers, handling two different sets of wrapped and unwrapped cards is problematic as it essentially doubles stock holdings and ties up cash. The over riding concern, is that people give up on sending cards altogether.
The way it was
Traditionally cards were sold unwrapped with the envelopes sitting separately behind the cards in the card pocket in store racks. You selected your card and grabbed an envelope. If the envelopes were missing, you could borrow one from a nearby pocket. Well merchandised displays meant that cards and envelopes were quickly and easily replaced. You still see this set up in stores like WH Smiths.
As more specialist cards came into the market and the diversity of retailers grew, wrapping in polypropylene grew in popularity because it’s transparent, protects cards, gives a feeling of ‘newness’ and keeps specialist envelopes with their cards.
Plastic Alternatives
Previously seen as signifier of ‘newness’, plastic is now starting to be seen as a signifier of ‘environmental damage’. Many consumers are beginning to demand change. In certain instances, where the cards are intricate and may be damaged if they are not wrapped we are seeing a distinction being made between necessary and unnecessary plastic wrapping. Some publishers have opted for ‘topless’ cello bags that don’t have the extra fold nor the plastic ‘peel and seal’ strips attached to them.
There are alternatives like oxo-degradable plastics and plant based PLA (polylactic acid). The former, which have been found to break down into environmentally damaging micro-plastics, are set to be eliminated by the end of next year. PLA is growing in popularity as it is biodegradable in the right composting conditions.
Compostable materials have a recycling problem though. We don’t have the infrastructure in place to handle identification and separation, so both PLA and PP are being combusted or going to landfill where the conditions aren’t suitable for composting. Because of the current structure of local government responsibility for waste, long investment time frames for new systems and lack of infrastructure for dealing with either type of film, the general advice is to return to publishing cards without film packaging.
Pushing the Envelope
There’s also the issue of envelopes being separated from cards. Not a massive problem when envelopes were mostly the same sort of quality and size. Lately, some publishers have pushed the proverbial to create more special envelopes costing more to produce. It’s not hard to envisage publishers with beautiful envelopes having to merchandise more often than others because theirs get half inched by consumers wanting something nicer.
With the need to keep envelopes together with cards and to keep displays looking more tidy, a variety of approaches have been taken so far. Museums and Galleries developed their ecoBand packaging for their BBC Earth licensed range of cards. Caroline Gardner have created an InFold, which is affixed to the envelope and card on the reverse using a plastic-free peelable label. Both companies have patents pending on their systems.
Woodmansterne have developed their own peelable label system, Smart Seal, with innovative printers, Windles, who have also launched their own commercial version called Kard Klasp. Woodmansterne, who handle greeting card brokerage for John Lewis, have led the charge on committing to the peelable label solution and have supported other publishers needing advice to make the change. Their Director of Operations, Adam Osborne, shared his learnings at our recent GCA AGM and spent a good deal of time helping me with information for this article.
Not every labelling solution appears to be working ‘snag free’ yet. If any publisher cuts corners by using a poor quality label that damages the consumer’s purchase, then it won’t be long before all labels are viewed with suspicion causing an insidious problem for all card sales over time.
Labels haven’t been problem free either. There are early reports of a few being ripped by shoppers wanting to see inside the card. Plus, they are printed on silicone coated glassine based rolls of tape that (like baking paper) you cannot recycle at home. Release paper like this can be recycled commercially. Woodmansterne have recently developed a stronger seal and are conducting trials on a new way to apply Smart Seal, allowing the card to be opened.
Labels
For those that are making the shift to label clasps, it is very important that the correct adhesive is used. It needs to hold to the board and envelope well enough so it does its job of keeping envelope and card together. It also needs to be easy for consumers to peel off and not damage the product in the process. Ultra low tack options apparently work best. Cards printed on lick coated boards with harder, less waxy inks, UV inks, along with more drying time all work well with the right labels.
Some adhesives react with the ink or varnish or sealant combination on the board. Some leave traces of adhesive on the board or pull bits of it off. If you imagine just 5 different label types, 5 boards and 5 inks, you have 125 combination variations. With so many different combinations available, the quickest and simplest solution is for publishers to use the tried and tested solutions on offer. These have been extensively tested on a variety of boards, coatings, inks, and so on. It is mind boggling the level of detail they have gone into to create these labels. Age testing, pressure tests and environmental impact are just some examples.
The aforementioned labels are long horizontal strips that wrap around the front and back of the card. Some, like Louise Tiler and James Ellis, have gone for wider labels with a greater surface area of attachment. Aside from Windles, other label suppliers worth talking to include Wrapid, Loxelys, Olympus Print Group and Label Express.
How to Apply
For those switching over to attaching labels, you can either apply them by hand or source a machine to help. Woodmansterne use a bench top ALS 4310 machine which, after being slightly modified by ALS, can label up 1,800 cards per hour. The cost of the machine is £6,000 and operator training time is negligible. It is ideal for embossed cards or those with embellishments as they don’t go through any belt feeders. You can also buy manual labelling dispensers from office Depot for as little as £30 that can label up to 300 cards per hour. Useful if you work with outworkers or don’t have access to capital to finance an ALS machine. Make sure you build a jig or template so that the label goes on straight every time.
After this publishers can also purchase a paper bander which can band 25 batches of six cards per minute meaning you can ditch your plastic outer bags that group the cards in sixes. Prices start from £3.5k from a cheap Akebono to £5k for a fast, reliable bench-top version from Jenton or ATS Tanner. Alternatively you can apply these by hand.
With Greta Thunberg and Extinction Rebellion dominating our headlines this year, it’s easy to see that the world is demanding that we take better care of issues affecting our environment. With the law soon to be introducing Extended Producer Responsibility schemes (essentially meaning the polluter pays), now is the time to act. Before it’s too late.
How we can all help fight the War on Plastic
What I learned taking part in Plastic Free July
