Cheaper than a card. And so much Better. So quick and easy to give. So wonderful and long-lasting to receive. The Better Cheaper Slower Gift Subscription.
Better Cheaper? It’s gotta be the healthiest $10 gift around. Slower? It’s on a 365-day time release.
In a Way, it’s Cheaper than a card. Not just because it’s like 365 cards, 365 daily reminders that you are the giver of the gift that keeps on giving. No, it’s actually Cheaper for our planet. Really. In carbon footprint terms, I think a year of BCS costs the planet less than one Christmas card from Hallmark and the Post Office.
Let’s do the math
A year of daily e-mail’s not much at all – about 36 grams of carbon emitted by the internet apparatus that delivers them. Now, let’s say the lucky recipient actually spends five minutes a day, every day for a year, reading and watching Ways of the Day. That’s about 30 hours of computer use, which consumes electricity responsible for about 270 grams. Let’s call the total 300 grams. A little over a quarter of a pound.
Cost-Benefit Analysis
Let’s imagine that the recipient is not just lucky, but smart, too. So he or she starts replacing burned out light bulbs with the cool, new LED ones. And stops buying bottled water in favor of filtering tap water at home. And starts buying local, seasonal produce. And eating a little less meat. Walking instead of riding sometimes. That lucky recipient could reduce his or her personal carbon footprint by tons. Not grams. Not pounds. Tons. Not to mention the personal health benefits and money savings.
Cost Comparison
That beautiful Christmas card? Manufacturing the card stock and envelope alone are responsible for 140 grams of carbon emission. If you send a kinda small one. Add the printing inks, the printing and getting the card to a stationery store near you – you’re probably up to 250. The Post Office adds another 50 for delivery, not counting the carbon overhead of that organization. So that card goes over the 300-gram line before you even get to the costs of recycling, landfill and deforestation.
The Moral Imperative
I mean, really, isn’t a Better Cheaper Slower gift subscription the best and coolest $10 thing you can send to someone you care about? Even if you never sent cards in the first place.
And it’s really easy. Click here, enter the address and credit card info and give one or two. You can even write a personal greeting to each lucky friend. But be concise; you only have 255 characters for each one. The number of characters in this paragraph.
Just takes a minute. And seems really thoughtful. Because it is.
