At a crucial period when the earth is facing a sustainability crisis due to the emission of greenhouse gases and the rise in sea level following global warming, the business world can play a key role in protecting the environment by switching over to digital cards from paper-printed ones.

Greater use of digital business cards has come as a major game-changer in reducing the use of wood-pulp-based paper printed cards. It also proves a higher awakening among business people to play their own role in reducing carbon emissions and protecting the environment.

In fact, the environmental impact of the use of paper business cards is colossal, as over 1.4 billion trees are cut every year all across the world for various industrial purposes, including the making of wood pulp for paper manufacture. It may be noted that about 1513 pounds of greenhouse gases are released to produce just one ton of paper.

How Use of Digital Business Card Apps Can Protect the Environment

Digital business cards are a must for global sustainability. If you don’t switch over to it from paper cards, you might be endangering the global forest cover and promoting global warming.

One of the primary reasons for this is that paper business cards can only be recycled seven times. After this, it would be considered waste.

The paper waste will find its way to landfills, further creating an urban sustainability problem. Digital business card apps can protect the environment in the following ways:

Protecting Forests:

You cannot ensure sustainability unless you protect your green patches: the forests. How digital cards can save forests can be explained if we take the USA as a single case (as an example).

Do you know about six million trees are cut annually for papermaking in the USA? Just imagine how many million trees are cut annually by global paper manufacturers. This clarifies that you can protect the forests by switching over to digital cards.

Saving Precious Drops of Water:

You know very well that the water crisis is developing fast all across the world. It is in this context that you should know that to produce one ton of paper, over 17,000 gallons of water are used.

As about 100 billion paper-made business cards are printed annually, the quantum of water used by paper factories to produce the cards runs in millions of gallons of water. To sustain the water needs of the earth, we must reduce this paper-card use and switch over to digital cards to save water.

Stopping Carbon Emission:

The environment is facing major dangers due to carbon emissions and industrial pollution. Emission of CO₂, or carbon, can be reduced greatly if the paper industry reduces its manufacturing.

Besides, the felling of trees for papermaking can also be reduced greatly. The solution here lies in the use of digitized cards, which require no wood pulp and the running of machinery used by fuels. This is more so as the use of 2,076 pounds of carbon dioxide to produce a single ton of paper should alarm you.

Reducing Urban Waste Generation:

Municipal urban waste has emerged as a major environmental crisis as the landfills are taking the shape of garbage heaps in all cities of the world. A single business card generally weighs about 1.35 grams, and 88% of them are thrown away.

The thrown-away business cards find their way into landfills. Landfills are already overburdened with garbage, and these business cards further add to this burden. Thus, by switching to a digital business card app, we can prevent further pollution of our atmosphere and harm to our planet. Besides, the 220 million pounds of toxic pollutants generated by the paper production industry annually (at a global level) can also be prevented from flowing into water bodies and rivers.

Other ‍environmental benefits of the use of Digitized Business Cards

‍The global environment can benefit greatly by using digitized business cards. This is a major reason why you should switch over to digital cards from paper-made cards.

According to a recent report issued by Market Research Future, the demand for digital business cards is growing globally. The report says that the digital business card market size is projected to grow from USD 181.46 billion in 2024 to USD 389.3 billion by 2032, exhibiting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 10.01% during the forecast period (2024 – 2032). Additionally, the market size for digital business cards was valued at USD 164.95 billion in 2023.

The following four reasons may help you realize why you should switch over to an electronic card:

• Unlimited Numbers of Cards at a Single Price: If it is a paper-printed card, you have to pay for each of them (in a packet of 100 cards). But you pay for a digital business card only once and avail the benefit of an unlimited number of cards. Using your smartphone, you can transmit thousands of cards in a given time.
• No Weight to Carry: If you are using a smart digital card, you don’t have to carry the card in a card box in your pocket.
• Smarter Way of Information Exchange: Colorfully designed e-cards packed with your corporate information make you move with the current trend. This is a much smarter way of information exchange.
• Cheaper than Paper Cards: Your Return on Investment is higher in digital cards than in costly paper-printed cards since no physical medium like paper and ink is used while making digital business cards.

Conclusion

The growing awareness among businesspeople to contribute to the protection of the environment in their own way is reflected in the greater use of digital business cards by switching over to them from traditional paper-made cards. This has greatly reduced the forest-felling to source wood pulp to create paper. Mobile technology and greater use of smartphones have further boosted it.