Headteacher of the Belton Lane Primary School has banned his pupils from sending Christmas cards, citing the environmental impacts as his excuse.
Parents of the children have complained that the move is out of the Christmas spirit and hypocritical, as a result of him announcing the ban to all of the parents with a letter (wasting his valuable amounts of paper). The letter stated:
"I have been approached by a number of children recently who are concerned with 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."
He went on to explain that the manufacturing of Christmas cards is contributing to the ever-growing carbon emissions in the world and that in order for the school to be environmentally friendly, they would not have a post box for Christmas cards from this year onwards - this ending the fun, and the tradition. The school has instead encouraged parents to save both their money and the environment, by sending one large card to the whole class (instead of individual ones for each student), which the teacher will then display for the class.
The response from most parents is negative, one complaining, "Why should children have the joy taken out of Christmas? Why can't all these cards be recycled anyway?" It has been stated as contradictory to receive the information on a piece of paper, hypocritical to complain first about the cards then disregard their own rules. Another has added, "I hope parents boycott these Grinch-like plans and keep this tradition alive by sending lots of cards to their little pals. They are mostly recyclable anyway."
The consensus is that the environmental issues are of course important, but the use of recyclable Christmas cards is not seen as a massive contributor to these problems.
