Scribbler goes green…er!

Scribbler is known for its witty birthday cards, outlandish humour and an amazing selection of one of a kind gifts. You might think of us as the green coloured card shop but now we’ve decided it’s time to go even greener! 

As of 2019, Scribbler is pledging to be more environmentally friendly. We love our ol’ big blue and green planet and think it’s time we all started taking better care of it.

At Scribbler we currently have a number of green initiatives. For starters, all our own brand cards use a fully FSC certified board. In non-card-people speak, this means all our paper comes from responsibly managed forests, where timber is harvested without damaging biodiversity or disrupting natural processes. The result is lots of happy forests and one happy us!

When printing our cards, we strive to be as eco-friendly as possible, that’s why our standard printing ink is vegetable-based. Other printing inks can contain mineral oil, which emits far more VOCs (volatile organic compounds) than its veggie counterpart. By using vegetable oils as standard we can reduce VOC emissions that help make the stuff we all breathe a bit cleaner.

Cards bought from our online store are printed to order to allow for your personalisations. We've made the conscious decision for both environmental and aesthetic reasons to print these on matte instead of gloss card. These are easier to recycle and kinder to our planet!

We choose to print all our cards, notebooks, flat wrap, and postcards here in the UK. While printing everything on the other side of the world could save us a fair few pennies it comes at a much greater environmental cost. Supporting UK-based businesses and designers is also a big part of our core values, which is why we work with a range of quality printers across the country to deliver our fantastic products. One of our print suppliers is even entirely carbon neutral!

And don't think we forgot about our online gifts! In Scribbler's bid to stay green, we are proud to state that the packaging we use to post our gifts is completely eco-friendly and recyclable* - yes, even those pesky fill chips! Instead of polystyrene, we use starch based void fill chips to protect your items in transit which are 100% biodegredable and compostable. 

*Please check our FAQ's for any exclusions.

Over in our warehouse, we’ve been also been rethinking our use of plastic. We’re making the move to ditch the plastic bags used to transport our cards to us from our printers, and switching to a single paper band to keep our bundles of goodies together! In doing so we predict that for every 1,000,000 cards we print that we’ll save 166,666 plastic bags - that’s over 333kg of unwanted plastic not going to landfill!

 Our print supplier for all orders from scribbler.com has a number of great eco-friendly practices, including using FSC accredited board and using non-toxic inks. When ordering from the website your card will be sent out in a reinforced, cardboard-backed envelope eliminating the need for the usual cellophane bag. That way we’re protecting your lovely new card while protecting our number one favourite planet.

The cherry on top of the green cake is that our website printer is a member of an amazing Carbon Capture Programme. For every sheet of paper used in the production of all online orders the scheme replants a set number of trees. In 2017 this resulted in 640.63m2 of new woodland in the UK, removing 25,625kg of CO2 from the atmosphere! We thought that was pretty cool and we love working with a printer that shares our eco-values.

In our stores, we’ve also been working hard to cut out bad plastics from all our products. Currently all Scribbler brand cards in store come in fully recyclable cellophane bags, however, only 11% of plastic in the UK makes it into the recycling bin so we decided it was time to up our game. As of 2019, all newly printed standard size Scribbler brand cards will come in fully biodegradable film bags!

The new bags are made from PLA (polylactic acid) plastic, which is derived from renewable sources such as corn, potato or beet starch. By moving away from traditional petroleum-based plastics we’re helping to preserve our planet’s natural resources.

Ready for the really cool part? Once you’re done with the bag it can be broken back down into biomass, CO2, and water under the right conditions, which can then be eaten up by hungry plants.

Composting your bag is easy peasy lemon squeezy, just drop it into your kitchen, food or garden waste bin where it will either:

• Reach an industrial grade composting plant or landfill, where within 6 months it’ll have composted into CO2, water and biomass

• Head to an incinerator and burn up into water and CO2

 If disposing of your bags with a food or garden waste bin please remove the seal strip. Due to varying conditions of home composters, we cannot guarantee the bags will fully compost if disposed of in this way. Alternatively, check with your local council about their dedicated disposal plants and methods.

Since April 2019 we have been rolling out a range of ‘Naked’ cards to each and every one of our stores! We love getting naked (with the cards) and this is something we will continue to build upon for the rest of 2019. Unfortunately, because of damages, we can’t go fully naked on all our cards but we believe biodegradable is the next best thing. 

We’ve been super excited about this at Scribbler headquarters and have loved the positive reaction we’ve had so far from you all since launching with our 2019 Valentine’s range back in January!

You can spot our bio and naked cards by the friendly Going Green & Going Naked logos on the backs of our cards, so keep your eyes peeled around the shops!

We know nobody is perfect, and we’re not claiming to be the next Captain Planet, but we have a responsibility to protect our green and blue home, which is why we’re proud of our commitment to going greener and reducing our carbon footprint in 2019 and beyond! 

 We’re constantly on the look out to improve so if you know of any ways we can improve our eco credentials please drop us a line at customerservice@scribbler.com