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Written by Natalya Stanko   
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Wednesday, 01 June 2011

Green Credit Cards

Credit cards are flashy and plasticky. They're issued by megabanks. They stand in for dollar signs. They rarely appear in the same sentence as “conservation” or “Mother Earth.” However, it doesn't have to be that way. When your card supports the right products and causes, it can be even greener than your paper Benjamin.

BENEFITS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT: You'll save forests and wildlife, reduce landfill waste, contribute to your favorite environmental organization, and avoid forking out cash to banks that secretly fund dirty practices.

Time and effort: Medium. You will have to commit time to researching the card that suits you best.

Cost: Low. Make sure to look for low interest rates and no annual fees when you research cards. As with any credit card, try your best to pay your bills on time to avoid extra fees!

How to Make Your Credit Card Sustainable:
  1. Choose your card.1 The megabanks (Bank of America, PNC, Citigroup, and others) now offer a variety of green cards that boast eco-rewards, carbon offsets, and even complimentary trees. Some megabanks offer affinity cards, which bear the logo of a select charity or nonprofit and donate about half a penny for every dollar you charge or transfer. During your research, don't fall victim to greenwashing . Affinity cards often charge annual fees and have higher interest rates than standard cards.2 You might be better off getting a traditional card, pocketing your money, and writing a check to your favorite environmental group. Most importantly, note that while your affinity card might be supporting the good efforts of organizations like the Sierra Club, your bank might be funneling its profits to unworthy causes, such as mountain top removal coal mining in Appalachia, illegal logging in Indonesia, and the construction of oil pipelines in Russia. Last year, ten megabanks provided more than $2.5 billion in loans and bonds to companies that conduct mountain top removal, according to a report by the Sierra Club and Rainforest Action Network.3

  2. Your best bet is to avoid the megabanks and instead look to a community investment bank or credit union, which provide financial services to those under-served by traditional banks.4 For example, consider Portland's Albina Community Bank and its Visa card, which donates about half a percent of all purchases you make to your favorite Portland cause (all without secretly decimating the environment in Appalachia or Indonesia). In 2010, Albina donated $14,697 to local nonprofits.5

  3. Sign up for online statements. Instead of archiving paper statements, save your electronic statements to a hard drive or store them in your email account. Online statements save trees. For example, Discover card members save over 70 million pages per year with paperless statements.6

  4. Pay your credit card bills online. Save the paper, postage, and fuel required to mail a check.

  5. Now if only you could cut out all that junk mail associated with credit cards. You can! Start by registering with the Mail Preference Service and OptOutPrescreen. Then contact the credit card companies that still send you mail and tell them to put you on their “do not promote” and “in-house suppress” lists. For more on stopping junk mail, read here .

  6. Most credit cards are made of PVC, a plastic that doesn't biodegrade. Petition your credit card issuer to ditch PVC. For more on PVC, read here .

  7. Use your credit card to make eco-friendly purchases. Also, decline a receipt at the register.

  8. Use the card sparingly. Save natural resources by buying only what you really need. Instead of swiping at the supermarket, pay in cash at your local farmer's market.

  9. If you still have some megabanks in your wallet, pay your bills on time. Otherwise, you'll have to fork over some cash, granting your bank freedom to do whatever it pleases with your money.

  10. Recycle your expired cards, but don't mix them in with your household recyclables. Collect your cards and other PVC plastics (and all your friends' PVC plastics) and drop them off at one of the 1,800 post-consumer plastic recycling companies in the United States. Alternatively, get crafty with your cards. Make an iPhone stand, a mosaic picture frame, a magic wallet, a magnetic flower box, a guitar pick, or even a pair of earrings!7 But remember, whether you craft or recycle, protect your identity by cutting or scratching the card to remove your name and number.
Swipe with care, and you just might do some good for the environment!

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1 For starters, browse this list of green cards:
http://www.greenyour.com/lifestyle/leisure-recreation/shopping/tips/use-green-credit-cards
2 http://www.comparecards.com/blog/articles/evaluate-the
-pros-and-cons-of-those-new-eco-friendly-cards/
3 http://ran.org/reportcard
4 http://www.greenamerica.org/pubs/realgreen/articles/creditcards.cfm
5 http://www.albinabank.com/personal/pb_creditcard.cfm
6 http://www.discovercard.com/customer-service/statements/paperless.html
7 http://howtoreuseitcreatively.com/how-to-upcycle-everything/
top-ten-list-how-to-reuse-expired-credit-cards/;
http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/
8-crafty-ways-recycle-reuse-credit-cards-1273.php




Comments (1)
RSS comments
1. 29-01-2012 23:48
Appreciate
Yes, I really like the idea of a green credit card, which gives the users bonus points as they buy vital products and services, such as public transit tickets, or eco-friendly laundry detergent or food, with no necessity of getting no credit check loans. These points could then be redeemed for real money, or to lower one’s utility bills. This design offers a small economic incentive to make the right decision—and more importantly, a constant and subtle psychological motivation to make new green choices. In other words, it is a great example of option editing. And subtly editing people’s options can work very well. However, the question is, will it stimulate additional consumption? Either directly, due to the positive effects of saving the world by buying “green”, or indirectly through the rebound effects, giving a person some new discretionary income?
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 02 June 2011 )

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Green Facts

  • Washing your clothes in cold or warm instead of hot water saves 500 pounds of carbon dioxide a year, and drying your clothes on a clothesline six months out of the year would save another 700 pounds.

  • Refrigerators built in 1975 used 4 times more energy than current models.

  • 77% of people who commute to work by car drive alone.

  • In the United States, automobiles produce over 20 percent of total carbon emissions. Walk or bike and you'll save one pound of carbon for every mile you travel.

  • Bamboo absorbs 35% more carbon dioxide than equivalent stands of trees.

  • Recycling aluminum saves 95% of the energy used to make the material from scratch.

  • The World Health Organization estimates that 2 million people die prematurely worldwide every year due to air pollution.

  • Americans use 100 million tin and steel cans every day.

  • States with bottle deposit laws have 35-40% less litter by volume.

  • Current sea ice levels are at least 47% lower than they were in 1979.

  • You’ll save two pounds of carbon for every 20 glass bottles that you recycle.

  • Recycling 1 million laptop computers can save the amount of energy used by 3,657 homes in the U.S. over the course of a year.

  • A laptop consumes five times less electricity than a desktop computer.

  • Less than 1% of electricity in the United States is generated from solar power.

  • Shaving 10 miles off of your weekly driving pattern can eliminate about 500 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions a year.

  • Plastic bags and other plastic garbage thrown into the ocean kill as many as 1,000,000 sea creatures every year.

  • A steel mill using recycled scrap reduces related water pollution, air pollution, and mining wastes by about 70%.

  • Nudge your thermostat up two degrees in the summer and down two degrees in the winter to prevent 2,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere.

  • Americans throw away enough aluminum to rebuild our entire commercial fleet of airplanes every 3 months

  • A single quart of motor oil, if disposed of improperly, can contaminate up to 2,000,000 gallons of fresh water.

  • Recycling 100 million cell phones can save enough energy to power 18,500 homes in the U.S. for a year.

  • You will save 300 pounds of carbon dioxide for every 10,000 miles you drive if you always keep your car’s tires fully inflated.

  • American workers spend an average of 47 hours per year commuting through rush hour traffic. This adds up to 23 billion gallons of gas wasted in traffic each year.

  • Turning off the tap when brushing your teeth can save as much as 10 gallons a day per person.

  • 82 percent of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. come from burning fossil fuels.

  • It takes 6,000,000 trees to make 1 year's worth of tissues for the world.

  • One recycled aluminum can will save enough energy to run a 100-watt bulb for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.

  • You will save 100 pounds of carbon for each incandescent bulb that you replace with a compact fluorescent bulb (CFL), over the life of the bulb.

  • Due to tiger poaching, habitat destruction, and other human-tiger conflicts, tigers now number around 3,200—a decrease in population by about 70% from 100 years ago.

  • Recycling for one year at Stanford University saved the equivalent of 33,913 trees and the need for 636 tons of iron ore, coal, and limestone.

  • If every U.S. household turned the thermostat down by 10 degrees for seven hours each night during the cold months, and seven hours each weekday, it would prevent nearly gas emissions.

  • Glass can be recycled over and over again without ever wearing down.

  • A tree that provides a home with shade from the sun can reduce the energy required to run the air conditioner and save an additional 200 to 2,000 pounds of carbon over its lifetime.

  • In California homes, about 10% of energy usage is related to TVs, DVRs, cable and satellite boxes, and DVD players.

  • For every 38,000 bills consumers pay online instead of by mail, 5,058 pounds of greenhouse gases are avoided and two tons of trees are preserved.

  • Every week about 20 species of plants and animals become extinct.

  • An aluminum can that is thrown away instead of recycled will still be a can 500 years from now!

  • Rainforests are being cut down at the rate of 100 acres per minute.

  • Americans throw away more than 120 million cell phones each year, which contribute 60,000 tons of waste to landfills annually.