"That's
Not A Proper Card - It's Not Made Of Paper!"
That's
the comment I got from a rather miffed relative when I dared
to send a digital greetings card through hyper space - rather
than 'overpay' for yet another piece of our precious environment
- manufactured into a pretty paper greetings card - dutifully
wrapped in yet more paper and sent on it's way
by snail mail - talk about stuck in a rut!!
A little compassion
and soul searching is needed here, me thinks - no, not for
my apparent cop out of sending a digital e-card, compassion
for a few trees please!
After all - what
is really more important; getting a traditional
card through your letter box or to live on an earth that
hasn't been raped of it's necessary (and very beautiful)
resources. Is breathing less important than getting a paper
birthday card from Aunty May?
What
has a tree ever done for us?...
Trees give us
oxygen and absorb harmful carbon dioxide - · A single
mature tree can absorb carbon dioxide at a rate of 48 lbs./year
and release enough oxygen back into the atmosphere to support
2 human beings!
Trees also absorb
other harmful chemicals from the air such as Sulfur Dioxide
(SO2), Nitrogen oxides, peroxyacetylnitrate (PAN), Ozone
(O3), cadmium, chromium, nickel & lead.
Trees also protect
our water and reduce land flooding. Their protective canopies
break up wind,heat and rainwater and help to prevent top
soil erosion and flash flooding. Tree roots absorb nutrients
and chemicals that are otherwise harmful to our water, ecology
and quality.
They are pretty
much vital to a working environment, they nurture other
growing trees & plants, recycle, provide homes &
nurseries for our animals & birds, food for them and
for us. Trees give us shelter and protection, beauty and
definition, they brighten our days and without enough of
them our world will be in a very vulnerable place!
But what do we do!
- We chop them down so that we can wipe our backsides in
comfort, buy new furniture (that really doesn't
have to be made from yet another tree) waste mountains and
mountains of paper on packaging, junk snail mail, company
promotion, printing of 'paper copies' of everything and
- yes - the good old greetings cards.
Time
to Get Real!
It's time to prioritize, the
digital revolution isn't here just for the fun of it - though
it is quite fun when you get the hang of it. Start using
those pixels & megabytes instead of trees for paper,
Look around you, at our fingertips we have electronic, space
saving diaries, memos, document files, back up devices -
even music and video, see CD pollution - phones, PDAs notebooks,
laptops, computers etc etc. We need to start making proper
use of our newest technology and save some trees - we need
them now, in our high pollution world, more than ever!!
It's understood that there are
times when nothing but a paper card will do for someone
like granny, who - apart from the fact she doesn't own a
computer let alone know how to use one and unlike most of
the rest of us, saves her precious mementos and doesn't
send them to the already overflowing landfills - just wouldn't
benefit from a digital e-card but, if we all just ask
one person to send us digital cards instead of paper ones
- imagine how many trees that would save!
A few cold hard facts about
the greetings card industry...
