Mastercard accelerates virgin PVC removal

All newly–produced Mastercard plastic payment cards will be made from recycled or bio-sourced plastics from 2028, such as recycled PVC, recycled PET, or polylactic acid (PLA).

The company will support its global issuing partners through the transition away from virgin PVC.

The rule change will see all newly made cards certified by Mastercard to assess their composition and sustainability claims - this certification will then be validated by an independent third-party auditor. Once a card has been validated it can be imprinted with a Card Eco Certification mark.

Mastercard launched its Sustainable Card ProgramME in 2018. Since then, over 330 issuers across 80 countries have signed up, working in partnership with major card manufacturers to transition more than 168 million cards across its network to recycled and bio-based materials. The recent announcement further accelerates these efforts.

Taylan Turan, Group Head of Retail Banking and Strategy, Wealth and Personal Banking at HSBC, comments, 'As part of our net-zero strategy at HSBC, we’ve already introduced recycled plastic payment cards across 28 of our global markets and embedded the requirement to use sustainable materials for all debit, credit and commercial cards in our product governance; removing 85t of plastic that would have ended up in landfill.'