PaperCulture.com - Modern Eco StationaryDuring the holidays, Americans will send 2.1 billion greeting cards, most of which are made from virgin paper and will end up in the garbage.

If you’re looking for ways to have a greener Christmas, consider recycled Christmas cards. Greeting cards made from recycled paper save virgin forest and take less energy to create. So if you’re looking for a way to reduce your environmental impact this year, here are some places where you can find recycled Christmas cards.

My Good Greetings only sells cards made of 100% recycled Forest Stewardship Council (FSC)-Certified card stock (50% post-consumer waster) and pairs them with 100% recycled envelopes manufactured with 100% post-consumer recovered fiber. And you can also feel good about purchasing your cards online, as they send packages with 100% recycled labels and recycled shipping materials. If that’s not green enough, they offset their carbon footprint through Greenshipper.

Minted.com allows customers to choose the type of paper they’d like their cards printed on, including the option of FSC-certified, 100% post-consumer waste paper manufactured with wind-power. They have a nice selection of flat and folded photo holiday cards, and they make it easy to find what you want by allowing you to sort by format, number of photos and other options.

PaperCulture.com makes it easy to buy your cards and mail them out. They sell only 100% post-consumer recycled paper cards, and will plant a new tree for every order. But best of all, you can personalize your cards online and Paper Culture will then actually send your cards directly to your recipients – thereby bypassing the extra energy required to send them to you first – and you pay ONLY the cost of the postage. There’s no extra fee to send the cards directly to your recipients.

Gallery Collection
You’ll find two types of cards in their Environmentally Friendly Christmas Card category – recycled paper cards and wind power cards. Cards are marked with icons to let you easily see which ones are made at low-impact, emissions-free mills powered by wind-generated, renewable energy, which ones are made from recycled paper, and which ones are made from raw materials that have been certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.

Pear Tree
In addition to offering a nice selection of regular green Christmas cards with holiday images, Pear Tree also offers recycled photo cards that contain up to 100% post-consumer fibers.

Fine Stationery
Although they don’t have a category specifically for recycled greetings, Fine Stationery has over a dozen designs you’ll find if you search for recycled Christmas cards on their site. Some contain post-consumer fiber. You’ll just need to read the descriptions to discover which recycled cards includes post-consumer waste.

Holiday Classics
Holiday Classics offers a variety of recycled Christmas cards and some of them are also printed with soy ink. Detailed card descriptions help you determine which cards have 100% recycled content, post-consumer content or soy ink printing.

RedStamp.com offers over 30 earth-friendly Christmas cards, and they make it easy to find them with a category devoted to Eco-Friendly products. You can easily tell from the descriptions which cards contain post-consumer recycled paper content, and which are printed with soy inks or created with renewable energy.

Adapted with permission from Where to Buy Recycled Christmas Cards on Squidoo.