9 Eco-Friendly Business Cards from Sustainable Sellers
If you’re looking to make a lasting impression on customers while championing sustainability, your choice of business cards matters. From the design to the copy, it says a lot about a person’s professional outlook. What's more, choose eco-friendly business cards, and you also show you care for the planet.
Whereas a great deal of networking and contact information swapping happens online these days, there’s still something more memorable about sharing a business card.
As such, you should also consider the production process and materials used to create each card. This says a lot about your environmental footprint.
In this article, we’ve selected 9 of the best sustainable business cards for you from smaller crafty sellers (mostly on Etsy). These options provide for unique designs, great product quality, and a minimal environmental footprint.
Related: For more environmentally friendly office ideas, you might like our reviews of the best eco-friendly office chairs and zero-waste tips for the office.
9 Eco-Friendly Business Card Options from Crafty Sellers
Stand out and create a positive impact on customers or clients with your business card. Here are business card options from small retail businesses that all work to minimize waste and its environmental impacts.
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1. Green Lemming Recycled Mini Business Cards with Rounded Corners
Green Lemming creates eco-friendly branding supplies for businesses, such as business cards, logo and packaging stickers, display cards, and hand tags. The business is UK-based, and to reduce the carbon footprint, the owner, Danielle, sources all materials locally.
Each of their recycled business cards offers a unique and pocket-friendly design to help you market your business. You can easily put them in the pockets of your dress shirts, jackets, or trousers.
Business cards with an organic look from recycled materials
The rounded corners and various recycled paper stock types to choose from help you tell your brand story uniquely. This brand offers five different material types. These include recycled white grain, recycled brown kraft, 100% recycled white, 100% recycled grey, and recycled ivory cards.
You’ll also be making a statement by showing that you’re eco-conscious.
Post-consumer waste is used to create some of these items. Aside from providing environmentally friendly branding supplies, this brand also supports Trees for Life. This means a percentage of the profit from every recycled business card sold goes into restoring trees in the Caledonian Forest. Also, the brand eliminates unnecessary packaging when shipping out the items you order.
2. Eco Stationery by Helen
Are you a small business looking to support another small business? Eco Stationery by Helen offers stationery for eco-conscious small brands. The brand emphasizes the tagline of “be seen being green” in support of businesses making environmentally-conscious decisions.
The owner creates these light brown business cards from recycled paper cards. You can recycle them afterward.
In addition to the cards, this brand also provides brand sticker type. Shop the range through the site. You can recycle these, and the backing papers are compostable.
When it comes to package supplies, you can also recycle or compost the shipping products. Also, Helen, the brand owner, makes only two trips to the post office per week for shipping. She put this method in place to create an efficient way to reduce carbon emissions.
3. Plantable Flower Seed Paper Business Card
Little Green Paper Shop offers biodegradable and sustainable printed business cards, papers, wedding invitation suites, envelopes, and business stationery.
The brand prints great quality “beautiful things on earth-friendly paper.” Ana and Graeme, a husband-and-wife duo, established this brand. Tracing it back, everything the brand is today kickstarted with Ana’s wedding stationery business in 2014. She developed this over time and grew it into the business you see today. Graeme compliments her creative side by handling the marketing and sales aspects.
A business card that plants seeds
They make these business cards from plantable seed paper. All cards are tree-free and 100% biodegradable, and you can easily plant them when you no longer need them.
The brand also offers a variety of material types with optimal product quality in mind. These include lux seed, bloom seed, elephant poo, and sugarcane papers. They put these options in place to abide by their tree-free and biodegradable ethos. To support their green philosophy, you can recycle and reuse their shipping boxes.
4. Rustic and Simple White from Handmade Recycled Paper
Rustic and Simple creates handmade, sustainable business cards, stationery, tags, and envelopes. The owner, Debbie, created this small business as an expression of her creativity. She says nature’s true elements inspired the brand.
All the business cards are handmade from recycled paper stock through the mold and deckle method. You can choose from four different colors. These are kraft brown, speckled brown, white, and granite grey colors. You can also select either the colored or black print design.
5. Brite Spot Engraving Wooden Business Cards
If you’re looking to stand out with unique business cards, a wooden design is all you need. More and more people are becoming aware of the need to stand out in business. These wooden eco business cards from Brite Spot will create a favorable experience for your customers. The brand aims to create personalized products you can share with people.
When buying from Brite Spot, you can select the product specifications, materials, and thickness you desire for your business cards. The two material options are alder and maple wood. The creator laser-cuts each business card and engraves it with your brand details.
6. Lemon Cat Shop Cotton White Blank Business Cards
These business cards from the Lemon Cat shop offer a smooth and rounded edge design. This store specializes in eco-friendly craft supplies, party supplies, gifts and accessories, and stationery.
The owner makes these business cards from British-made, acid-free card stock. This gives a smooth and uncoated finish. Because they’re blank cards, you can also use them for wedding place markers, hand tags, mini postcards, and name tags.
7. Tricia Made This Upcycled Blank Business Cards
If you’re looking for something fun and quirky, you’ll appreciate these handmade business cards. The owner of the store, Tricia Allen, creates these cards from post-consumer materials by upcycling food and cereal boxes. The innovative and unique design of each card will get people talking about your fun brand with its vintage vibe.
The colors of each card vary because she makes them from different boxes. She hand cuts them to the standard business card size of 3.5 x 2 inches and creates rounded edges. Tricia suggests drawing on the cards, placing your business stamp, or embellishing in creative ways. They also are perfect for handwritten notes you can use for other messages.
8. Paper Recyclery Deckle Edge White Blank Business Cards
This store offers products created with handmade recycled paper. Aside from business cards, they also have wedding stationery, envelopes, cardstock, party designs, and gift tags.
After the owner left her career in science, she found the freedom to explore her love for arts and crafts. Tina, the founder, recycles office trash, colorful flyers, and brown bags. She uses these to make papers in different colors. You'll find her range perfect for your company, as well as handwritten notes.
Handmade for a unique, natural look
Tina makes the pulp from recycled office waste with added 20 - 30% cotton to improve the texture and edges. She also adds internal sizing to the pulp to reduce the porousness of the final papers. This prevents the ink from bleeding. The edges are unique because each sheet is individually hand-pulled. For shipping, the owner packs them in compostable and biodegradable bags.
Why Should I Choose an Eco-Friendly Business Card?
A great value product does not mean compromising the safety of the environment and the planet at large. Further, you can demonstrate your business values to attract clients or customers through your eco-conscious choices.
By choosing wisely the materials alongside where and how your calling cards get made, you’re taking a step to reduce the burden on the environment.
Many large-scale print shops use plastic materials to make many business cards today. Even with the paper cards, they bleach with chlorine to give the bright white paper color. Unfortunately, this bleaching agent is toxic not only to the environment but also to human health.
Consider the Impact of Certain Paper Stock
In reality, pulp and paper factories release chlorine compounds into waterways as liquid waste. This causes a lot of harm to aquatic animals.
Apart from this impact, printing industries cut down many trees without replacement, causing an imbalance in nature. As humans, we throw away a lot of paper regularly. In the United States, they use an estimated 68 million trees to make products each year. From this number, studies have shown that papers make up a large portion of municipal solid waste.
From cards made from 100% recycled material to those from t-shirt offcuts, creativity and environmentally friendly goals can merge. When choosing stock for your eco-friendly business cards, opt for uncoated paper, as the coating in many cards is plastic-based. Further, those who are green seal certified have undergone checks to warrant their environmental credentials.
Alternative Options to Paper Business Cards
If you're looking to minimize environmental impact further, consider electronic business cards. These digital versions convey the same essential information as traditional cards but can be easily updated and shared digitally, eliminating the need for physical materials.
Another practical solution is using networking platforms like LinkedIn. A LinkedIn profile not only provides contact information but also a comprehensive overview of your professional background. This platform enables connections with potential clients and colleagues across the globe, offering a much broader reach than traditional business cards.
Eco-friendly business cards are a step in the right direction, but these digital alternatives could represent the future of sustainable professional networking.
Conclusion
Ready to switch to a more sustainable business card choice? The resources mentioned above are great places to start. You should also pay attention to the materials used, the type of ink, and also green packaging.
The paper types or stock you choose are as important as the design of the cards. Look out for recycled supplies, non-toxic elements, cotton material, and those created from post-consumer activities. Another alternative would also be to consider digital information sharing as more people now conduct their businesses virtually.
Jen’s a passionate environmentalist and sustainability expert. With a science degree from Babcock University Jen loves applying her research skills to craft editorial that connects with our global changemaker and readership audiences centered around topics including zero waste, sustainability, climate change, and biodiversity.
Elsewhere Jen’s interests include the role that future technology and data have in helping us solve some of the planet’s biggest challenges.
