Gift Shop Plus Spring 2023

Sustainability and eco-friendly trends in paper and stationery By Libby Llanso

Families can be such valuable resources in life and for me, my family has been truly life changing. My grandfather’s passion with printing began over 40 years ago repurposing hardcover books into paperback books.

Ten years later, along came my mom and her creative brain. Before she knew it, she and my dad had started a coaster business using the leftover old book covers. In a way, sustainability has always been at the forefront of my family’s businesses. So, it just made sense that the next generation would be Seedlings — a sprout deeply rooted in sustainability.

I think it’s important to be mindful of our practices and ask ourselves how we can do a little better and be a little kinder to this planet of ours since it is in fact the only one we have.

Seedlings started as the next generation of Legacy. We saw what our parents were doing and thought, “Why can’t we do this, but in our own way?” We had some of the best brains in the industry to pick, to use their resources and to start Seedlings. Seedlings started with a small card line, boxed card sets, coasters (of course) and a few notebooks. It’s grown into calendars, planners, more than 200 cards in our line, and even into wellness.

COMMITMENT TO DOING BETTER

What I’m most excited about our growth and where we’re going is our commitment to keep learning and doing better. We want to be cello free, so we’re making it a reality even though the options currently available don’t work with our envelopes. We have been working on a new way to keep our cards and envelopes together and introduced it at *Noted!

Seedlings is growing and, in that growth, I want the changes — even the small ones — to be rooted in our passion for sustainability. Earlier this year, we got rid of the plastic box for our coasters, and we’ve created the concept of a coaster bar where the customer creates their own assortment and bands the coasters with our seed paper belly band and seal. Seedlings created a completely zero-waste Postcard Calendar with a few things in mind: our signature seed paper still being a main part; keeping all those gorgeous foil details and stunning art; and ditching the waste of a normal calendar product. We obviously

LOVE a calendar but hate how every year it’s just thrown away. This product has nothing that needs to be thrown away. The packaging? Plantable. The calendar? All can be upcycled. Done with your month? It’s now a postcard. Leftover date grid? It’s full color and foiled art to keep!

SUSTAINABLE ALTERNATIVES TO TREE-BASED PAPER

We only print on our seed paper with an inkjet because in order to print our beautiful artwork, the heat of the printer would kill the seeds (the whole point of the paper!) so this is why you don’t see our art printed on seed paper but rather our packaging!

There are so many cool, sustainable alternatives to tree-based paper. We’ve worked with paper made from grape leaves, and one of my all-time favorites is paper made from recycled cotton left over from the waste of the textile industry. Seed paper is, of course, our bread and butter — it’s made from post-consumer waste and then embedded with seeds. This paper is biodegradable and eco-friendly, and no trees are harmed in the process of creating it.

Sustainable or eco-friendly paper can be used for many things. In our own realm, we’ve begun looking at using these resources to create gift tags (this could be in our future…), wrapping paper, business cards — anything you do with paper could be replaced with some eco-friendly paper.

Featured image: The zero-waste Postcard Calendar from Seedlings has nothing that needs to be thrown away.