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Environmental awareness and sustainability is a shared responsibility between both producers and consumers. In our world, striving for products environmentally neutral or less environmentally damaging should be our goal. Producers need to constantly search out ways to stay ahead of consumers needs and yet be aware of their environmental impact. What we do Here at Envirocards™ we promote environmental sustainability whithin the plastic card industry. This is achieved by accreddting only organisations that are committed to providing a product which is sensitive to environmental concerns, not just covering the product with 'green wash'. When looking at a card we look at it's entire lifecycle, from production to disposal. For a product to meet our approval, it must pass a series of standards, which include; | 1) Recyclability - The product should have the potential to be made with as much recycled materials as possible. The product should be able to be recycled into other plastic products. | | 2) Product lifetime - The product should be useable it's entire life, otherwise it will require replacement, creating waste. The products eventual demise should mean the product can itself become a reuseable resource. Theproduct should be easily recognized and replace. | | 3) Quality - International standards of quality and conformity apply to plastic cards used in all areas of industry. Adherence to these standards mean less product is wasted than with cards showing non-conformity. | | |
Using these three basic but comprehensive standards, you know that any company carrying the logo Envirocards™, has a high level of professionalism, has a commitment to protection of the environment and recyclability of plastics in industry. Problems Cards are made of plastics that are derived directly from crude oil, and there is no infrastructure in place to recycle them. By allowing this to continue many card manufactures could be considered to be sacrificing the environment for profit, this could be irresponsible as it leads to more waste that doesn't breakdown in landfill. However plastic cards are made to last and are still the only realistic way of being able to have a robust automatic data capture system that can be intergrated into the various barcode and EFTpos systems used in financial, access control and loyalty systems. Think of all the plastic cards you own, most are replaced annually, do you really want all those taking up space in landfill somewhere? A Solution? Recently organic bioplastics made from cornstarch have become commercially available, they are not economically viable and breakdown differentially into inert elements. This breakdown happens over many many years and certainly doesn't happen unless the product is exposed to sunlight, heat, moisture or some combination. Unfortunately due to the need to maintain the card surface, which may have a magnetic stripe, barcode or human readable information, cornstarch plastics are widely unsuitable for manufacture of cards. This is due to the plastic constantly degrading, the polymer that has broken off may have been part of a magnetic stripe or barcode, and thus may lead to corruption of the information stored on the card. Also while the bio-plastic may eventually breakdown completely into harmless elements, there is no guarantee that the ink used in production of the cards isn't toxic. |