Happy Earth Day!
April 22nd, 2009 | Published in Adventures in Card Dealing
Happy Earth Day!
I wouldn’t say I’m a fanatic, but I do try to reuse and recycle whatever I can. My wife and I have a compost bin, we use cloth shopping bags, and we reuse plastic bags until they fall apart or have dog poop in them–whichever comes first.
In my business I also try to reuse as much as possible. I am happy to say that in my ten years of selling cards, I have never bought a box, bubble wrap, or packing peanuts. I get plenty of those in the mail, and as long as they’re clean, I reuse them. I ask my friends for their bubble wrap and foam wrap, too. They wonder what fun they’re missing.
My wife and I get way too many packing peanuts to reuse, so we bag the excess peanuts and take them to the UPS Store, where the clerks reuse them. My last load was eight or ten garbage bags full. Some eBay sellers, I’ve noticed, use peanuts made from corn starch, and those dissolve when they get wet–much more Earth-friendly than the styrofoam peanuts.
I do buy one type of packaging new, and that’s bubble envelopes. From eBay sellers I sometimes get cards in bubble envelopes with six layers of labels on them, and I think that’s great. As long as the cards make it safely, I don’t care what the envelope looks like. I do this as a business, though, and I need to maintain a reasonably professional appearance. So I compromise: I use a shiny new bubble envelope for the outside, and on the inside layer I wrap the cards in bubble wrap or a cut-up used bubble envelope. This works well for one to three cards, and for more cards than that I use a (used) box.
