Eco-Friendly Postcards

When trying to promote your business, using a lot of printed, paper materials is understandable. After all, you need business cards, pamphlets, brochures, postcards, press kits and more to get the word out about your business and to make sure you have materials on hand to pass out to interested parties whenever the opportunity arises. Even though this is necessary to run your business effectively, it's very wasteful and can result in a lot of wasted paper, ink and resources.

Thankfully, there is a way to send out printed materials like postcards in a less wasteful way. You can send eco-friendly postcards instead. Eco-friendly postcards are still printed on paper, but the process by which they are made and the materials that are used are much more green and environmentally conscious than the standard method of going about things.

The paper that eco-friendly postcards are printed on is made from recycled paper or cardboard. Usually, the percentage of recycle paper that's used is printed on the postcard itself in a discrete location. You can get everything from 10% recycled postcards 100%. Though 100% recycled paper makes very eco-friendly postcards, it can be quite flimsy and will likely be an off-white or brownish color, so unless that's the look you're going for, you might wish to go for a recycled-new material blend.

When picking out eco-friendly postcards, you need to also consider the kind of inks that are used to print the images and text. To be truly eco-friendly, you can't just pop the postcard in your printer and set it off. Instead, you need to look into using inks derived from more sustainable sources like soy. Soy-based inks can be just as bright and vivid as regular ink, but it's much less toxic and harmful to the environment, making it the perfect choice for your eco-friendly postcards.

When mailing out eco-friendly postcards, you need to consider what's the most ecologically sound way to accomplish it. That is, should you just drop them into the mail box or should you send them through another delivery service? Look into the delivery practices of all the major services like FedEx and UPS and see what is best for your purposes. You may find that dropping your eco-friendly postcards in the mailbox is the best way, but do your research first to make sure.

Finally, when preparing eco-friendly postcards, the most environmentally-friendly thing you could possibly do is to limit the number of mailers you actually send out. I know this sounds contrary to properly promoting your business, but sending out too many mailers can be annoying to the recipients anyway. Limit the times you send out eco-friendly postcards to those moments when you really have big news to announce like a sale or coupon or new product. To do otherwise would just seem hypocritical, especially if an eco-friendly bent is a main part of your business. Make your announcements really count with eco-friendly postcards and you'll go far to promoting the environmental message.