American Express to Reduce Plastic Waste by Using Recycled Plastic in its Cards

In an attempt to raise awareness among its cardholder, American Express has partnered with Parley, an organization focused on combating marine pollution, on an eco-friendly initiative that will aim to reduce its use of plastic. Along with rolling out a credit card constructed of mainly recovered plastic from the ocean and along the coats, American Express will focus on other initiatives that lower its plastic usage within the organization, airport lounges and in other efforts.

Douglas Buckminster, the group president of global consumer services at American Express said, “our oceans play a vital role in our lives, the health of our planet and the health of travel and tourism, which American Express has long supported. It’s important that we raise awareness and do our part to keep our oceans blue. Partnering with Parley is the right next step as we pursue our larger vision of backing our communities and sustaining the planet we share.” 

The card will be publicly available within 12 months and American Express will use the unveiling to announce additional eco-friendly commitments, in an attempt to create awareness surrounding waste within the ocean and surrounding coasts.


Parley’s AIR – avoid, intercept, redesign – is the philosophy behind American Express’ initiative to decrease its “virgin” plastic use. Along with decreasing new plastic use in its card, the American express also plans to phase out non-reusable plastic products in all its major offices and airport lounges in the next thirty days and remove any single-use plastic in airport lounges by the end of the year. 

An American Express Spokesman explained that the company will “set a comprehensive waste-reduction strategy to reduce single-use plastic and increase recycling rates in its operations globally by the end of the year.” This is all in an effort to achieve a zero-waste certification from New York City by 2025.

American Express has been trending towards waste reduction, as it has reduced its carbon emissions by fifty percent since 2011 and powers U.S. Data Venters and its headquarters with renewable energy. In fact, fifty percent of the company’s real estate worldwide is considered green.

This effort is synonymous with the message from Tuesday’s “World Environment Day,” where the theme was “beat plastic pollution. Companies and Countries alike are joining the Global effort to reduce plastic pollution. Ikea will ban single-use plastics by 2020 and India will eliminate all single-use plastics by 2022. India’s sentiment was relayed by the European Union two weeks ago.