Christmas Card Recycling

How to bring recycling into the classroom:

We encourage you to take advantage of the new year to teach the children a valuable lesson about the importance of recycling. Here is a link to a list of 29 fun recycling related activities that you can do in class.

What you need to know about recycling Christmas cards and paper:

Christmas is a wonderful time of the year but is also a period of heavy consumption. Therefore, it is important to be mindful of recycling after Christmas.

Christmas cards:

• Did you know? – The total amount of Christmas cards sent, along with other card packaging used over Christmas, could cover big ben 260,000 times.

Wrapping paper:

• Did you know? – Consumers in the UK will use 277,000 miles of wrapping paper each year. Over 83 metres squared will end up in the bin.

All these cards and lengths of wrapping paper end up being discarded! We need to encourage everyone to recycle their Christmas cards so that this large mass of paper doesn’t end up in land fill sites. It is important to note that any card or wrapping paper with glitter of glue cannot be recycled.

Where can I recycle?

There are several retailers who now offer a Christmas card recycling scheme, we have listed them below:

• M&S: offering its customers the opportunity to recycle their Christmas cards with in-store recycling bins in all of its large stores, with the aim of recycling over 10 million cards throughout the festive period. The Woodland Trust will receive a donation from M&S based on the number of cards collected in store for recycling. Every 1,000 cards equate to one new native tree being planted, meaning, if the target of 10 million cards recycled is hit, over 10,000 new trees will be planted throughout the UK.
• Sainsburys: Supermarket chain Sainsburys is also running a similar scheme this year by providing Christmas card recycling bins in its larger stores throughout January. The Sainsburys scheme supports the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC). A cash donation is made to the FSC based on the volume of cards received. Last year the FSC received a 10,000 donation from Sainsburys.
• Tesco: Tesco are providing a kerbside collection for service for Christmas Cards to make the process even easier.