A UK Principal has banned Christmas cards on campus, telling students and parents that it harms the environment.
Principal Jonathan Mason of Belton Lane Primary School wrote a letter to parents stressing the impact of Christmas cards on the environment.
“I have been approached by a number of children recently who are concerned about the impact of sending Christmas cards on the environment. Throughout the world, we send enough Christmas cards that if we placed them alongside each other, they’d cover the world’s circumference 500 times The manufacture of Christmas cards is contributing to our ever-growing carbon emissions.”
The school encourages parents to buy one card for a class instead of handing out cards to all the children, as the Christmas tradition.
“In order to be environmentally friendly in school we will not be having a post box for Christmas cards from this year onwards. Instead, we can encourage you to save money and the environment by not sending cards to all of the children in a class individually but instead, if you send a card please send one card to the whole class. Teachers can then display the card in the classroom for everyone to see.”
The principal’s efforts were created some angry parents. One mother told the Daily Mail:
“Why should children have the joy of taken out of Christmas? Why can’t all these cards be recycled anyway? And I buy a lot of Christmas cards for charity. I know we have to protect the environment, but these are a few Christmas cards once a year and to be told about this on a piece of paper seems contradictory.”
Other parents accused the school of hypocrisy, saying:
“Telling people to stop sending cards in a letter sent out to hundreds of kids stinks of rank hypocrisy. They are mostly recyclable anyway. I agree that environmental issues are important but I don’t see recyclable Christmas cards as a massive contributor to these problems.”
