Whole Foods and Starbucks are among the businesses offering more sustainable options, although higher costs of alternative materials remain an obstacle.
Written by James Barragan, The Los Angeles Times
Like millions of Americans, Jessica Hamilton of Pasadena will buy her friends and family a handful of gift cards this holiday season, drawn by their convenience.
Yet Hamilton, who carries reusable bags when she goes shopping, is bothered by the thought of all of that plastic ending up in landfills along with worn-out hotel key cards, credit cards and the like.
In 2012, the global card industry produced 33 billion cards, according to the International Card Manufacturers Assn. Most of those cards contained polyvinyl chloride, a plastic that contains pollutants that are harmful to the environment and is slow to decompose.
"If they had something more eco-friendly, that would make me shop at one place over another," Hamilton said.
Increasingly, card manufacturers and retailers are listening, offering more alternatives to plastic cards.
High-end grocery store Whole Foods Market Inc. did away with plastic cards in 2011 and replaced them with paper gift cards.
"Generally, at Whole Foods, we like to think green ... but we were producing tons and tons of waste from PVC cards and that wasn't in line with what we want to do," said Marushka Bland, gift cards project manager for the Austin, Texas, company.
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