The Seed Card Company launches this month with eco-friendly and vegan greeting cards, personal stationery and wedding suites. These are all made from post-consumer waste embedded with wildflowers or recycled pre- and post-consumer eco-friendly board and printed with vegan inks.
Partnering with global reforestation effort, Ecologi, each time a card or stationery suite is purchased, The Seed Card Company and Ecologi will plant a tree.
The new company was created during lockdown by a team of print industry professionals. Lewis Stevenson of Leeming Brothers Fine Stationery, and Kay and Jit Patel of luxury wedding and event stationery company Intricate Creations all share the responsibilities of running the business. All design and production is carried out in house. The Seed Card Company has also put in place a dedicated PR and Social team to drive consumer awareness of the products.
Lewis Stevenson says, “In 2019 the greetings card industry was worth £1.7bn, not including online retailers and sales. With the events of 2020 and the continuing lockdown, people have been sending more greetings cards than before. While the eco-friendly arm of the stationery industry is gaining traction at an unprecedented rate, with programmes such as Blue Planet II making manufacturers and consumers more aware of the huge environmental problem plastic and non-sustainable products are having on our ecosystem and the health of the planet, we created The Seed Card Company to offer a genuinely sustainable and eco-friendly greetings card alternative.”
The Seed Card Company cards are made entirely from post-consumer upcycled paper waste, meaning no trees are harmed in their manufacturing process. They are recyclable, biodegradable, and embedded with a mixture of six wildflower seed types including Bird’s Eye, Clarkia, Black Eyed Susan, Catchfly, Snapdragon and Sweet Alyssum.
Cards are either laser-cut or printed using vegan inks. As a plastic-free and zero-waste business, the printers do not use ink cartridges and any off-cuts from card sheets are reused as another piece of stationery, donated to schools, or planted. Any non-seed stationery items use a 100% pre and post-consumer recycled eco-friendly board which is completely chlorine and acid free and carries the ‘Blue Label’ certification. Envelopes are made entirely from post-consumer waste, and use a natural starch-based adhesive. Stickers are made from sugarcane and hemp and tissue paper is 100% recycled and not bleached, and the boxes and mailers used to post orders out in are recycled and recyclable.
By working with tree-planting and climate action funder Ecologi, the ‘one card for one tree’ scheme not only offsets any delivery carbon but also rebuilds natural habitats and creates jobs for local families who plant and maintain new forests all over the world. Customers will also be able to view The Seed Card Company’s forest and the changes it is making to local communities and the whole planet.
