The Environmental Approach To Gifts
There are several areas that a gift supplier like Redbows can play a major part in when it comes to the environment: printed materials, environmentally-friendly gifts and supplying electronic products that meet the WEEE and RoHS guidelines.
When we first got started in the gifts game we would receive literally tens of printed catalogues. Each cost a fortune to produce and post. Today, we still use catalogues but to a lesser degree thanks to electronic communications. The internet provides us with the opportunity to ‘present’ gifts through our websites, with Adobe PDF documents for download. We still have a small printed catalogue but it will only show a small selection of the gifts available rather than the entire product ranges. I am sure that over the next year, as we develop our ecommerce websites and documentation further, paper catalogues will be dropped from our marketing mix.
Redbows currently supplies a limited selection of environmentally-friendly products. A key factor in this is availability - there is just not a great selection available - yet! This will improve and manufacturers will develop their processes to produce an even wider variety. Currently mugs and pens are firm favourites as they can easily be made from recycled plastics. I am not convinced about the coasters made from recycled car tyres though…
Finally for electronic goods, the latest WEEE and RoHS directives apply. These directives apply to electrical and electronics items like USB flashdrives. RoHS is concerned with the materials used in manufacturing like lead-free solder and the processes involved, where as WEEE is concerned with end-of-life disposal of an item. A classic example is a battery - look for the crossed-out wheelie bin. This means that this product should not be simply thrown away at end-of-life but taken to a recycling centre.
So how environmentally friendly can the gifts industry get ? Well we obviously have a long way to go before today’s promotional pens can become part of tomorrow’s coffee mugs!
