One PVC-based credit card converted into a digital card saves up to 200g of C02 pollution from being released into the atmosphere.
The conversion also reduces 5 grams of plastic that would most likely end up in a landfill with sensitive personal information.
The process of changing operation standards is much more valuable than a recycling program, because the production of the 200g of C02 is never initiated to produce the card, and any C02 involved in machines that gather, transport, and recycle the plastics are never used either.
So a company that can initiate an alternative to plastic use, such as getting rid of plastic cards and going digital, saves the environment a lot more in the long run than what recycling programs can do.
4,536 cards produced equals 1 ton of carbon emitted. In just credit cards alone there were 537 million accounts in the US in Q1 2022 (M. Hull, Moneygeek; 10/2022) which equals 11,839 tons of C02 in the atmosphere. Moreover, for every 181,437 cards made uses 1 ton of plastic, so in credit card production alone the US uses about 3,000 tons of plastic, which looks like about 600 dump trucks, which is almost like dumping 2 dump truckloads of plastic in the ocean every day.
What would your neighbourhood look like if every day 2 dump trucks dropped a load of plastic in 2 separate yards for a month?
This number increases by orders of magnitude when you start to account for every other plastic card out there, Identification for states, passports, work Identification, membership cards, etc
