We use a lot of cardboard in our business. Besides making all our envelopes out of it, we also make notebook covers and cards from it. And every piece of that cardboard had another life first. As a box. A box for cereal, or crackers, or pasta, or granola bars, or brownie mix, or cake flour, or mac and cheese. As it turns out, each of those items, and each brand that makes them, uses a slightly different cardboard. We get grays and browns and lightly speckled and mostly smooth and extra smooth and all kinds.

We get boxes from our own groceries. And from our families. And from our neighbors. And from people at our neighbor’s church who we’ve never even met. It takes a whole community donating their recycling to us to keep our business running. We have grocery sacks of flattened boxes in the studio closet, organized by size, ready to be given their second life.