We’re Here to Save the Planet one Greetings Card at a Time
If everyone in the UK switched to Printy Cards, it would save at least SIXTEEN MILLION kilograms of paper & card every year – not to mention all the air miles associated with shipping boxes of cards all over the world. See the full article here.
How Much?!!!
Printy Cards is a family business.
In December 2019, my wife, kids and I were writing out Christmas cards.
All three kids wanted to send Christmas cards to all their class, which came to about 75 cards, in addition to the thirty or so my wife and I were writing.
We had bought a number of packs of cards, including charity cards, and even though we had saved money over buying individual cards, it was still an expensive exercise.
Not to mention all the birthdays of family and friends, and all the kids’ friends at school.
Recyclable and Not-so Recyclable
Even the the cards we’d bought were recyclable, not all the packaging was. The card packs had plastic box-covers which were non-recyclable. In addition, there was a significant carbon footprint as the cards had been printed in China.
I understand completely that charities want to make as much money as they can out of these cards and so have them printed cheaply in China.
However, all these boxes of charity cards had to be flown to England, shipped to an Amazon depot, and then stored away for later fetching, boxing and posting.
As you can imagine, there was also some waste and some recycling with each and every step of this process from an overseas printer, to my dining room table.
I thought to myself – “There must be a better way”. And there is.
Printing Cards at Home
I had always been good with graphics software, so I started to design some simple cards to print onto A5 card which we could fold and post to family & friends.
These were a big hit, and saved a bunch of money.
You should sell these!
Time and time again, friends and family kept telling me that I could sell these cards. We even ended up printing cards for our friends to send, and we sold a bunch at the school Christmas Fair.
I began to think about how I could cut out the massive carbon footprint of greetings cards printed overseas, by enabling everyone with a printer at home, to print their own greetings cards. Not only for Christmas, but for birthdays and all other events.
Formats & Folds
I realised pretty quickly that most people don’t have A5 card lying around the house.
So, I switched to A4 printer paper, which almost everyone has at home.
I experimented with formats and folds until I came up with the first Printy Card – a simple sheet of normal A4 paper folded twice to make an A6 greetings card.
But what about the Charities?
My wife liked the home made cards straight away, especially as I’d used a great picture of a Christmas tree. “But what about the charities?” she asked. And she was right.
Printing cards at home saves a massive amount of carbon footprint, and saves money, but had cut the charities out of the loop.
Found out more about how it works here.
Liver Cancer
My father-in-law had passed away a few years earlier due to liver cancer.
I decided that if I were going to sell this new invention online, it had to give a proportion of the revenue to charity.
Beyond that, I realised that some people might want to donate a percentage of the cost of a card to a cancer charity, whilst another person might want to donate that money to a pet or human rights charity.
So, I’ve designed Printy Cards to enable you to print greetings cards at home which saves you money. Note, that once you’ve bought a Printy Card, you can print and use it as many times as you like!
In addition, Printy Cards saves the planet, or at least in part, due to massively reducing the carbon footprint of greetings cards.
Lastly, Printy Cards enables you to save money and to donate at the same time.
But what about the Envelope?
Being supporting and critical at the same time, my wife correctly pointed out that not everyone has a pack of A6 envelopes at home, and if they did, that would carry a significant carbon footprint and contain non-recyclables.
I hit Google and discovered a load of difficult ways of making an origami envelope. All these methods were too difficult.
So, I designed my own way to fold a sheet of A4 into an envelope to carry the A6 Printy Card.
I printed a few guidelines and an indicator for the stamp and address, and there it was.
That EUREKA! Moment
The first time I wrapped a Printy Card in a home made envelope my wife and I went bonkers.
“This is it!” we screamed. From now on, we can make all our own cards and envelopes at a fraction of the cost of buying, and at a fraction of the carbon footprint.
How to Conquer the World
Using Printy Cards ourselves is great, but our vision now is to convert the world into using Printy Cards.
If you send 30 cards a year, we estimate you’ll save about £?? per year, about ??? of carbon footprint, and you’ll also be able to donate 25% to charity. Click here for a more detailed breakdown to see how we arrived at these figures.
Wood Pulp Paper and Cards
One last note in case you need any further convincing. Two sheets of A4 paper weigh about 10g. An average shop-bought Christmas Card (excluding any packaging) weighs about 30g.
So, even if you ignore the carbon footprint, recyclability and charity effect, a Printing Card is ONE THIRD the weight of a shop-bought card.
You’ll be reducing your wood-pulp usage by TWO THIRDS, or 66%.
This is MASSIVE!!! Go Printy Cards !!!
How can I get my first Printy Card?
To get you off the ground click here for your first and free Printy Birthday Card.