What happens to End-of-Life Cards? A Visa Case Study

The world is producing twice as much plastic as it did two decades ago, yet only 9% of this is recycled¹. The other 91% is ending up as landfill, being incinerated or leaking into the environment as microplastics making their way into the food we eat and the air we breath². As our world faces the growing challenge of plastic waste, it is critical to find sustainable solutions that collectively reduce, reuse, and recycle plastic.

Traditionally, cards are made predominantly of PVC. The use of these recycled materials to manufacture cards solves the upstream environmental impact but not the downstream impact when cards reach expiry or become invalid. Digital issuance which eliminates physical cards altogether, is of course one solution, but for the foreseeable future, digital and physical cards will continue to coexist, to cater to different needs.

Recognizing the need for a more sustainable solution, the Visa Innovation team embarked on an internal initiative, involving colleagues across Europe; to create a market inside Visa for end-of-life cards.

Developing a Market for End-of-Life Cards

The team noticed that employees’ corporate phones were often being used without protective cases and had the idea to collect expired or invalid cards from employees to recycle into reusable phone cases.

The pilot

The internal pilot ran across numerous offices in Europe, from Stockholm all the way to Malta. Over 5,000 cards were collected from 500+ colleagues and with the support of volunteers who spent hours removing the chips and shredding the cards, they were ready to be recycled.

The transformed phone cases helped raise money for circularity.org, showing how end of life items can become resources for new products, feeding the circular economy.

The Conclusion

Normally, cards are a challenging material to recycle due to their varying degrees of hardness, flexibility, as well containing impurities in the form of chips, magnetic stripes, and holograms and therefore often left to landfill. This pilot demonstrates the opportunity end-of-life cards have to be upcycled into higher-value products.

The initiative was also well received by Visa staff, who with little incentivisation searched their homes for end-of-life cards, brought them into the office and deposited them in collection bins. Showcasing the willingness and eagerness the public have towards sustainable practices.

Next Steps

Visa’s “learning by doing” approach to innovation has delivered informed insight that we can take to recyclers in each market. Core to this approach is transparency, which requires establishing a strong chain of accountability that accounts for the movement of physical cards across organisations.

The future of our planet depends on our implementing solutions such as this and our collective efforts to create a more sustainable industry.