Primary School Bans Children from Sending Christmas Cards to Help Protect the Environment

A primary school in the UK has opted to ban children giving each other Christmas cards out of concern for the environment.

Citing the environmental impact of carbon emissions during the manufacturing process of the thousands of cards being exchanged, the head teacher has reached out to families to tell them of the new policy.

Children are encouraged to bring one card in for their whole class which their teacher can then display, but they will no longer provide a post box for the children to “mail” their Christmas cards to each other.

“Throughout the world, we send enough 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,” head teacher Jonathan Mason told parents in a letter, published by the Daily Mail.

“So in order to be environmentally friendly in school, we will not be having a post box for Christmas cards from this year onwards.”

Despite being labelled a Grinch by many parents, some are supportive of the move. Others, not so much.

One parent, who did not wish to be named, said: ‘I know quite a few parents who are upset about this. Why should children have the joy of taken out of Christmas? Why can’t all these cards be recycled anyway? Where is all the Christmas spirit in this?”

It’s not such a bad idea actually — sending in one carefully chosen card with something lovely written inside for the teacher and fellow classmates is so much more meaningful than a child simply scrawling their name at the bottom of thirty cards. And does anyone actually still write out Christmas cards anymore? I stopped sending cards out when the price of postage went up and nobody seemed to notice!

What do you think? Are Christmas cards a dying tradition nowadays? Does your child enjoy writing out their Christmas cards? Do you still write and send Christmas cards? Let us know in the comments!