Paper or Plastic? Gift Cards Don’t Need to Be Trash
Tracy J. Wholf | November 25, 2022 | ABC News
As the holidays approach, experts estimate that roughly 60% of consumers plan on purchasing gift cards this December, making it one of the most popular gift-giving options. As a $173 billion business, gift cards have come a long way since they were first introduced in 1994.
More than 3.4 billion gift cards were sold in the United States in 2021 and 47% of U.S. adults said they have one or more unused gift cards in their possession, according to Research and Markets. But as environmentally conscious consumers demand more sustainable products, plastic gift cards have often flown under the radar, despite frequently ending up as plastic waste.
"As someone who works everyday trying to reduce plastic pollution, even I did not appreciate how many plastic gift cards are sold in the United States,” Judith Enck, founder of the advocacy group Beyond Plastics, which is working to eliminate single-use plastics and plastic pollution around the globe, told ABC News.
Most of those billions of gift cards are made from plastic, but some retailers, like Starbucks, Apple, and Amazon, have begun to sell paper or cardboard cards, which come from a renewable source and are easier to recycle. The best sustainable option is an electronic gift card, which has zero waste, but the majority are still produced in plastic.
"Seventy percent of them are made from polyvinyl chloride plastic,” Enck said. "The reason we’re so concerned about polyvinyl chloride plastic, or PVC, is because it’s poisonous to produce."
The Environmental Protection Agency classified vinyl chloride, a key component in the production of PVC, as a hazardous pollutant and human carcinogen. The production and disposal of PVC plastic puts a variety of people at risk of exposure to toxic chemicals.
"I don't think there's a risk from handling the PVC cards, but there definitely is a risk from manufacturing them,” Enck told ABC News. “If these cards are being burned, or even going to a permitted municipal waste incinerator in the United States, they pose a problem.”
The EPA is currently weighing whether to classify PVC plastic as hazardous waste, which would force entities to properly discard PVC in a responsible way.
Because it’s so difficult to dispose of, the bulk of PVC waste, including gift cards and bales of cut-out PVC from the production of gift cards, often end up overseas and illegally dumped in countries like Turkey, Malaysia, and Indonesia, experts said.
