We’ve Gone Naked!

From now on, Bewilderbeest will be naked at any shows, events, or police cars that you see us in!

The last of those typically follows the first two…

We hope that the picture above hasn’t put too many people off their spaghetti carbonara – just focus on the cards instead!

Thankfully, on this occasion, going ‘Naked’ does not refer to our attire, or lack thereof. Instead, the ridiculous picture above is to alert you to the fact that we will no longer be sending our greeting cards from online orders wrapped in cellophane sleeves. The cards will be naked.

What’s this all about then?

You may have heard Sir David Attenborough, among others, mentioning penguins a time or two (not the McVities chocolate biscuit). Well, they’re in a spot of environmental bother, along with a Noah’s Ark full of other animals, plants and habitats.

We’re trying to take a small step towards helping the environment, by reducing our need for single use plastics, and joining the ‘Naked Cards’ movement.

Cellophane sleeves for cards are ‘single use’ plastics and are not easily recyclable. All our greeting cards ordered on the website will now be packed without the cellophane sleeves. They will still arrive safe and clean, but will be ever so slightly more environmentally friendly.

It’s a small step but we sell thousands of cards each year, so this change will add up over time.

Will your cards in shops be ‘naked’?

You may still see our cards on shop shelves in cellophane sleeves because it is a requirement for some retailers. If lots of grubby paws are handling unprotected cards each day then a lot of stock can be damaged, which many shops cannot afford.

However, alternative bright ideas are being explored, and the greeting card industry is way ahead of many others in making environmental changes!

Why not just use biodegradable cellophane sleeves?

Not all biodegradable sleeves are as environmentally friendly as we’re often led to believe.

Many are not home compostable; they are industrially compostable, whereby they need certain conditions to decompose. If they end up in landfill they won’t decompose much faster than standard cellophane sleeves.

Don’t worry though – we’ve got Colonel Mustang looking into alternatives, and the options out there are getting better all the time. We hope to use home compostable sleeves before too long, if shops require the cards to be protected.

What about all your other products?

Some of you may have seen or heard the quote by Anne Marie Bonneau of Zero Waste Chef:

“We don’t need a handful of people doing zero waste perfectly. We need millions of people doing it imperfectly.”

Well, we know we’re doing it imperfectly BUT, we are trying to make changes when we can, and this is just the start!

We cannot promise that this is the end of Iain getting naked though…