Greetings cards are traditionally displayed for several days up to and after the event that they are celebrating. In the past when the event is over, the greeting cards were simply gathered up and thrown into the trash. Now however there is a trend to try and recycle these cards where ever possible.
The cards should be taken to your local recycling point and sent to the paper mills for recycling. Most shopping malls now have paper recycling bins and it is easy to put the cards into one of these bins when you go shopping.
Before taking the cards to be recycled you should check them and remove anything on the cards that cannot be recycled. If any of the greetings cards are musical cards, you should tear off any bits of metal before recycling the card. The paper mills also do not like cards with lots of glitter on them; their sieves become blocked when trying to recycle these cards.
When you get to the recycling bin, you should remove any plastic from the cards as this makes it much easier to process the cards at the paper mill. The cards are then taking to a recycling plant for sorting. Usually they will be put over a sorting conveyor where they will be manually sorted and any non paper items removed.
After sorting, the greetings cards are compacted up into large bales and stacked waiting to be transported to the paper mill. When there are enough to make a full load, they are loaded onto a vehicle and taken away for recycling. On arrival at the paper mills, the bales of cards are inspected to check that they are of the correct quality. If the load is accepted, the bales are unloaded and turned back into paper pulp.
A bale has its wires cut and is placed on a conveyor and sent into the pulping machine. During the pulping process all non paper items are sieved out of the material and the rest is turned into pulp. The pulp then has all of the water removed and is then ready to be used again. Most pulp from recycled greetings cards is turned into toilet paper.
When you are next out shopping, have a look at the toilet paper in the shops and look to see which brands are made from recycled paper. It is quite possible that some of them have been made from the process of recycling your greetings cards.
Your Own Greetings Cards
Traditional greeting cards are made from paper or cardboard onto which photographs, pictures, drawings are added. Often a greeting is written on the outside of the card congratulating the recipient on the event that they are celebrating. It is not uncommon to find a verse, rhyme or greeting also printed inside the card.
Greeting cards can be designed in many various ways and printed with a many different images. They are designed to cater for almost any occasion and in order to meet this requirement they have messages inside the cards to appeal to diverse audiences.
Some celebrate birthdays, other engagements or marriage, Easter, Christmas or any other event that is celebrated. They are also used in times of sorrow to express your personal feelings when some body has died.
Many greetings cards are now made out of recycled paper and the greeting card industry sells cards in retail stores in vast volumes. Over 1,500 greeting card manufacturers sell an estimated seven billion cards each year. Each household receives the staggering figure of an average of 70 cards annually.
Greeting cards are made of paper wood pulp or part "rag" (textile waste) and a growing trend is to use recycled paper. Many manufactures put a glossy aqueous coating consisting of water and a water-based acrylic coating on to the cards after printing when a photograph is shown on the card. Many different types of inks are used.
A recent trend has seen many companies move toward the use of soy inks, containing water-based solvents. These are more environmentally friendly as they are more easily cleaned, recycled, or disposed of than oil-based solvent inks. Soy ink composition varies with the printing process; cards are most often printed using sheet-fed printing and the soy ink for that includes between 20%-30% soybean oil, resins, pigments, and waxes.
During the printing process that before an entire run of cards is processed, a couple of examples of the cards are run off and checked. The cards are examined and checked to see that there are no spelling mistakes, that the design has not been smudged and to ensure the imprint is of acceptable quality. They will be particularly checking to see that no colour corrections or ink adjustments need to be made before the print run starts. When the proof is approved and signed-off, the printing process can begin.
It is not unusual for a printing run of up to 250,000 cards to be printed in one go. Large runs such as this are often printed using sheet fed offset printing that permits the printer to print between 5,000-15,000 sheets per hour. The printing press takes a single sheet of paper at a time, generally printing all of the black images and words first. It then moves quickly to the next metal plate (which applies a different colour) without allowing time for drying the just-applied inks.
While on the press, an aqueous coating (that provides shine) is applied to the just-printed card by another plate. The cards then left to air dry for up to five days. The cards are then cut to size, packaged and sent out to the shops
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