Choosing Eco-Friendly Paper for Crafts and Cards

SEATTLE, WA — Recycling is a popular activity today, thanks to a broader availability of eco-friendly consumer products at reasonable prices. One easy way to be more conscious of the environment is to choose recycled paper for printing and crafts projects. Whether it is for creating invitations to weddings, baby showers and other events, or for use in scrapbooking and photo albums, recycled paper offers many beautiful alternatives to what’s known as virgin paper, or paper manufactured directly from tree fiber.

“With today’s acid-free and archival quality recycled paper, it’s possible to use environmentally sensitive materials to create products – even photo books – that will last for generations,” says Rick Bellamy, CEO of RPI (www.rpiprint.com), which handles the manufacturing and fulfillment for consumer print-on-demand products for many of the leading ecommerce websites. “And since recycled paper is now more affordable than ever, it is a great choice for just about any project.”

Bellamy offers the following tips:

• Recycled paper can even be used for formal invitations. Post-consumer waste is paper that has been returned for recycling, keeping it out of a landfill. It’s possible to find vendors using paper for digitally printed invitations that have a post-consumer waste composition, even for the most formal of occasions. Tiny Prints (www.tinyprints.com) offers many of its designs on recycled cardstock. Tiny Prints’ sister site, Wedding Paper Divas (www.weddingpaperdivas.com) offers its Signature Textured Ecru paper composed of 30 percent post-consumer waste material as a choice for invitations and hold-the-date cards.
• White isn’t always right. Chlorine and its derivatives are the most common bleaching agents used in the paper industry, and it’s an environmentally harmful process. But today, it isn’t always necessary to use chlorine to whiten paper. Through other de-inking methods, such as washing, manufacturers are now offering its customers recycled paper with the same brightness of virgin paper.
• Living green is easy. Note cards, notepads, notebooks and softbound memory books, such as those offered through Wal-Mart (http://www.walmart.com/), Snapfish by HP (http://www.snapfish.com) or Costco (http://www.costco.com) are composed of FSC certified materials. Using an acid- and lignin-free recycled paper for your photo projects will be easier on the environment, and provide the long life your photo projects deserve.