Fri 28th Sep, 2007
Is Green Card Effective?
Recently Barclaycard came out with a new credit card called the Barclaycard Breathe, which is a card that claims to offer a greener solution by offering 50% of Breathe profits to be donated to environmental projects dedicated to reducing carbon emissions around the world. Breathe has also claimed to offer a greener customer experience with no paper statement, environment friendly produced credit cards, and a credit card recycling scheme for the old cards. Breathe customer’s will also benefit from discounts such as £50 off British Gas home insulation and other offers. Despite all these benefits, one has to ask whether using a green card is worth it.
The size of the Barclaycard Breathe contribution to the environmental projects depends on the profit levels that are made by Breathe. This means that the further you are in debt the more Breathe will contribute, as profits will be generate by cardholders who rack up their interest payable as they are unable to make more than the minimum monthly repayments. Those who pay off the entire balance on the credit card every month will find that their contribution will be minimal. Although you will be making a contribution by paying off your debt on time, you will find that you can make an even bigger contribution by falling into debt and sinking into the red zone. This is not the ideal solution to help protect the environment. So before selecting a credit card that sounds good, you will want to research the product and ensure that it will be as good as it claims.
Consumers who are prone to debt on their borrowings are wiser to take out cheap loans to cover their expenses and look at other ways of helping the environment. For example, using a ‘green’ credit card to pay for repairs to an old car is not as environementally friendly as taking out a personal loan to buy a more fuel-effiicent model, and yet once interest rates are accounted for, both can cost the consumer the same amount.