Reducing Plastic Waste Brings an Unintended Bonus! 

Newsletter subscribers and regular customers know that last year I began to look into ways of reducing the amount of plastic I use in packaging.

I began with my greeting cards, ditching polypropylene envelopes, replacing the bleached white envelopes with recycled Kraft envelopes and changing the printed card stock to one that comes from sustainable forests.

I then turned my attention to my open edition prints which come wrapped in cellophane to protect them from handling and damage whilst out on display. 

I tried compostable cellophane but the reality is the wrapper must go through a specialist industrial process that most domestic waste never reaches.

Then came the mind-concentrating event. Last November The National Trust (one of my larger customers) announced that from January 2022 they would no longer accept any single-use plastic packaging on any of the products they sell in their shops. Well done the National Trust - nice and clear!

The answer was hardly rocket-science. The cellophane wrap will be replaced with a large, square envelope with the addition of my branding. The end result looks rather classy, though I say so myself. 

And the unintended bonus? To fit the envelope I had to slightly reduce the size of the print mount. My open edition prints can now be framed in a standard IKEA frame. fulfilling a long-standing wish to give my customers an economical framing option for this range of prints.

With prices set to rise, these packaging changes will also make it easier for me to keep the price stable. I think this qualifies as win/win!