The concept of exchanging paperless digital business cards is quickly gaining momentum in the corporate world to ensure sustainability, reduce carbon footprint, and save the overall ecology.  

The corporate world has found digital business cards as one of the ways to be eco-friendly and contribute as an option for sustainability. Digital cards help save trees, which would have otherwise been cut due to the process of making paper cards. If you switch to digital business cards, the number of trees that were left to create wood pulp would be far less.  

Paper cards are mostly made of wood pulp (some are also printed on synthetic materials). The creation of wood pulp is posing a serious threat to the ecology and biodiversity of plants.  

According to Science Direct, a research-based magazine (Elsevier publication), an established production unit belonging to the pulp and paper Industry (PPI) currently produces 400 million tons of paper annually, and this is likely to grow to 900 million tons by 2050. 

The PPI is the fourth largest industrial energy user because it uses chemical pulping, black liquor evaporation, and drying enormous quantum of energy. Thus, it’s high time corporates shifted to digital cards.  

Here is how digital cards contribute to a sustainable living 

Digital Business Cards: An Eco-friendly Solution for Corporates

Saves Trees: It might shock you, but 7 million trees are felled to create 100 billion paper cards worldwide each year. You need not be told about its devastating effect on the green cover, forest, and ecology. You can be a ‘save ecology’ warrior by switching to e-cards requiring no wood pulp. The World Ecological Forum’s research says digital technology could deliver one-fifth of tree cutting needs to hit net-zero carbon emission by 2050. In this regard, digitally printed cards can play a dominant role.   

Garbage Reduction for Urban Sustainability: Traditional paper cards are fast becoming outdated in a large number of countries, including Australia, Japan, the European nations, and the USA. Corporate operations are fast turning paperless: emails to reduce paper use, e-transfer of money to reduce the use of paper-made cheques, and digital business cards instead of paper cards. The main purpose of it is to reduce paper wastage that creates garbage. Paper cards and waste papers end up in urban landfills.   

Reduce Carbon Emission: The paper manufacturing process releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. To produce one ton of paper, about 2,076 pounds of carbon dioxide is released into the air. So if a company having 100 employees and orders 250 cards annually switches to e-cards, one tree and 500 gallons of water can be saved. It can also help the company reduce 74 lbs of waste and 75 pounds of carbon emissions. 

Saves Energy: You can promote electricity saving by switching over to a digital card. The process of making paper cards and printing them consumes a great deal of electricity. The printing press uses heavy-duty printing machines. Their power consumption rate is very high. Using more machines means creating hurdles for sustainability. On the other hand, digital custom business cards require no running of heavy machines for their production. This can go a long way in saving power.  

You can customize your business card and mail it to hundreds of prospective customers, your business associates, and suppliers, thus saving trees and energy, which can go a long way in reducing Greenhouse Gases and sustaining the ecology. 

In Conclusion

If you are still using paper-made business cards, it is time that you switch over to e-cards to mark your contribution to ecological sustainability. But just think it over; you cannot keep on recycling paper cards in your effort to protect the ecology. This is due to the reason that paper-printed cards cannot be recycled more than seven times. 

You are, thus, not effectively contributing to ecology. In contrast, you are permanently helping sustainability by switching over digitally printed cards, which will neither result in felling trees for wood pulp nor promote carbon emission. 

You are also helping save the energy or electricity required to create the wood pulp, related technological issues, and printing. Saving electricity is a major means of promoting sustainability.