Environmental Statement
Evergreen Wraps and Evergreen Cards are all about trying to make the world just a little bit better. We strive to do business in a more enlightened way, where we take responsibility for the impact of our business on society and the environment, and move these impacts from negative to neutral, or better still, positive. It’s part of our quest to become a truly sustainable business, where we have a net positive effect on the wonderful world around us.
100% natural Evergreen Wraps & 100% natural Evergreen Cards
100% natural, 100% of the time
Our first and most important step in creating a sustainable business is to only use 100% natural, healthy renewable compostable cotton for our Wraps. We don’t want none of that nasty polythene or polyester– it comes from petrol. Ever heard of petrol being good for the planet?…Exactly. We don’t want to make our Wraps out of weird material even if it’s cheaper to use, the same goes for our reusable cards – which are made from 100% recycled, PH neutral paper, they are packed in biodegradable cellophane bags in the UK. We want to focus on keeping things natural, good and green that’s why we called ourselves The Green Giving company.
Sustainable packaging
Gift wrap has a bad name, a real bad name. The Green Giving Co wants to change that with our Evergreen Wraps.
We want to take the rubbish out of gift wrap and make it a waste free zone. Yeah you heard right, no more bags of rubbish at Christmas just loads of Evergreen Wraps you can use over and over again!
Now down to the nitty gritty. It sounds crazy, but to get our Evergreen Wraps on the shelves we need to package them on their way to the shops and once their there – for the shelves. Unfortunately we haven’t got any giant Evergreen Wraps to do the job for us…yet. Which means that of packaging we do have to use, we want it to have the lowest possible impact on the world around us.
We aim to make our packaging as sustainable as possible. To make this happen we try to do three things:
Use as little packaging as possible per pack.
Aim to reach zero waste.
Use as much recycled or renewable or natural material as possible.
Lower its impact: packaging that has a low carbon footprint.
The reason we package our Evergreen Wraps is so that they don’t get damaged – do you know how much gift wrapping paper ends up in the bin before it’s even wrapped a present? Crazy though it is thousands of tonnes of paper a year end up binned whilst still in the shops because it’s been torn or wrinkled in some way. So obviously, we need to make sure that our packaging does the job it’s supposed to.
We use 100% recycled cardboard to make the boxes you see the Evergreen Wraps encased in. And our gift tags are actually made of the waste from our packaging – which means yet again – zero waste.
Just to be a bit of a nerd for a moment…deep breath… we comply fully with relevant UK and European environmental legislation and waste regulation perceived best practice; including that of Packaging Waste 94/62 EC two parts, Packaging (Essential Requirements) Regulations 1998 (S1998/1165) and Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997 (SI1997/648)….and you can breathe again! (I wish we could get a brownie points for that!)
To make sure we are always improving, our sustainability and packaging teams set priority improvement projects by assessing all our packaging against our four goals. Any new piece of packaging is also assessed against these criteria. We have our own set of minimum standards covering all relevant environment and social issues for suppliers that are not covered by existing certification schemes.
There is always more work to do, so we will keep pushing on. If you’ve got any ideas about how we can improve our packaging, then please let us know at hello@thegreengivingco.com
We take our packaging seriously at The Green Giving Co. so not only do we want it to look great, but we also want to make sure we buy it from suppliers that look after both their workers and the environment.
We’re not perfect and we have to make environmental and commercial decisions which don’t always go hand in hand, however we strive to make the right decision at every point. We work hard to ensure we find the best suppliers and best business partners who share our values and beliefs. We ensure that suppliers abide by fair, minimum standards, and work to improve their social and environmental performance year on year. Our strategy is to work with people are the most committed to make real improvements and then we will help them get there. Achieving our goals is going to be a long journey, and probably one that will never end, but every small positive change is a step in the right direction.
Post Consumer Waste.
It you haven’t noticed already, Evergreen Wraps and cards are ALL about preventing post consumer waste. We like to think of ourselves as ‘rubbish warriors’. We want to achieve ZERO waste on this little planet of ours and our first step is the Evergreen Wrap and the Evergreen Card. They can be re-used for eternity as gift wrap or bags or scarves or really anything you like! That’s the marvel – and if they get dirty just give’em a scrub and when they get holey, compost them to make your trees grow. “What about the box they come in, with all the instructions on?” I hear you cry “Or the gift tags and pegs” – hell you can recycle or compost them too. Yep, we’re on our way to a totally new way of gift wrapping, gone are the days of scissors and tape or land fill sites full of gift wrap, we’re on our way to wrapping with no waste.
The Evergreen Wrap – reusable giftwrap because anything else is Rubbish.