Plastic Gift Cards -- Multiple Ways To Get 'Em Outta Our Landfills!

It's getting harder to keep up with all of the things that we're inadvertently doing as a society to screw up our planet, isn't it? Here's one more thing to add to the list. How many plastic rectangular cards such as hotel keys, store "credit" cards, iTunes cards and gift cards for places like restaurants and grocery stores pass through your hands in the span of one year? That many, huh? And what do you do with them when their monetary value is depleted? Ohhhhh. That's definitely not good for our environment. Plastics currently take up 25% of our landfills by volume, and while it's common knowledge that plastic bags and bottles are dastardly to our ecosystem, those little slices of expired polyvinyl chloride (PVC) buying power are hardly any better. Most of them are made with PVC plastic, a well-known carcinogenic compound, which releases extremely high levels of chlorine, dioxin and other persistent organic pollutants into our environment from the cradle to the grave.

The gift card market has fast become a multi-billion dollar industry, with sales expected to climb to $52.2 billion by 2012. Our general consumer culture and great love affair with shopping has caused plastic gift and credit cards to become firmly entrenched within our daily lives, but the unfortunate consequence is that 75 million pounds of this material enters the waste stream (in just the U.S alone). If you find that hard to believe, you may be even more shocked to learn that an estimated 10% of those cards are branded with the Starbucks logo. Good grief, java junkies! Before any of us hang our heads in shame, there are now a few options to help us part the clouds.

Retailers like Wal-Mart, REI, Borders Books and Target have embraced bioplasic gift cards, and Discover Financial Services issues the only fully biodegradable PVC-based credit card in the U.S. (taking 5 years to break down in compost, soil and water). Mirel brand corn-based bioplastic gift cards decompose in fresh/salt water, soil and compost -- this photo depicts what a Target card looks like after 40 days of home composting.

Furthermore, Mirel bioplastics reduce the use of non-renewable energy by more than 95 percent and they provide a 200 percent reduction in greenhouse gases. There are obvious drawbacks to the production of this alternative plastic, though. Corn crops, which are generally derived from GMO seeds, require copious amounts of water, fertilizer, and pesticides to cultivate -- but, it is a step in the right direction. Their competitor, NatureWorks, creates Ingeo corn and sugarcane-based polylactic acid resin (PLA) that similarly generates no toxins, uses 65 percent less energy than conventional plastics and generates 68 percent fewer greenhouse gases. The new Apple iTunes card is made from this material. PLA, however, is not as easy to compost as Mirel bioplastic, taking 3 months to reduce into two elements -- carbon dioxide and water -- in a “controlled composting environment.”

The majority of retailers are still issuing conventional PVC-based gift cards, but a company called Earthworks Systems recycles old PVC cards donated by individuals and businesses into large PVC sheets that they cut into new logo-branded cards. They will accept all conventional plastic cards (except those with holograms and scratch-off labels), so start a local program in your area and mail them in bulk to:  Earthworks c/o Halprin Ind.   25840 Miles Rd.   Bedford, Oh 44146

But wait -- there's another option! Try using more eGift Cards, which are e-mail-based and purchased, gifted and redeemed entirely online. Pizza Hut, Kohl's, Macy's, Walmart, Sears and Apple iTunes are just a few of the retailers offering this choice to consumers.

And now...onto the grand finale. Here's the part where I dazzle you with all of the totally neat-o-la gift card repurposing ideas that I found across the internet. You don't have to be naturally endowed with the spirit of an artist in order to test a few of these ideas out....unless you are, indeed, an artist who uses your old plastic relics to apply oil onto canvas.

You can also check out Instructables for a comprehensive tutorial on how to make this eensie-weensie credit card refrigerator magnet "planter."

If you know your way around a pair of scissors, you might just want to tear a page out of Etsy artist Jupita's book and create a bunch of plastic gift card mosaics like the ones photographed below.

I don't know why I never thought of making guitar picks like these before -- how easy would that be?

And finally, for those who just want to bid adieu to the trappings of consumer culture altogether, I present to you this deconstructed credit card charm bracelet -- perhaps a triumphant badge of courage in these recession-strapped times?