Recycling Plastic Cards Into Furniture With Santander Backing
Plastic credit cards can be recycled once their life ends, and the material can find a surprising second life in street furniture. A collaboration between an Alicante-based company and the German multinational Giesecke+Devrient (G+D), spurred by a contract with Banco Santander, is turning that idea into reality.
Under this arrangement, Banco Santander, led by Ana Botín, will ensure that expired or damaged cards are properly processed and transformed into raw materials. The Calpe-based enterprise then uses these recycled materials to manufacture furniture. Gravity Wave partners with a spectrum of organizations to recover plastic from the seafloor and to repurpose damaged fishing nets into usable resources.
For the project, G+D and the Alicante company devised a plan to create benches and paper boxes by combining recycled cards with discarded nets. A batch of 400,000 recycled cards could yield roughly two tons of recycled PVC. The initiative envisions collaboration with 130 public banks. The furniture’s design and color can be customized to fit specific aesthetics, making it suitable for indoor and outdoor environments. Banco Santander plans to donate the produced furniture to a range of public institutions, including Valencia City Council.
through the tellers
Santander Spain has launched a communications and awareness campaign encouraging customers to return expired or damaged ATM cards. The program has been adjusted to support a new collection service, and customers will receive guidance on how to return their expired cards with the documentation that accompanies new cards. The approach aims to keep cards out of landfills and to seize opportunities for material reuse, aligning with broader sustainability goals seen across banks in North America chasing greener operations.
David Gonzalez, sales director of Cards and Digital Payments for Southern and Western Europe, Africa and the Middle East for G+D, notes that consumers are increasingly pursuing greener lifestyles and that sustainability dominates every bank’s agenda. The aim is to prevent cards from polluting nature and marine ecosystems, and recycling and reclaiming their materials is seen as the best route to achieving that.