Green Credit Card – or a Green Wash
Shop till you drop – your spending can help save the earth ?
A credit card launched earlier this year in Australia – the GE Money eco Mastercard, is touted as the first green credit card in Australia. It is a credit card with a rewards program (which means a higher interest rate) but instead of taking rewards as frequent flyer points, you can take them as carbon offsets.
GE estimates that by spending $600 a month on the eco card, you can earn enough points to offset the average Australians’s carbon footprint. (This seems extraordinary when you consider that due to our reliance on coal and mining exports, we are one of the worst in the world for carbon dioxide emissions.)
On Earth Day (April 22) every year, rewards accrued throughout the year will be used to purchase and retire carbon offsets. Each customer’s rewards amount is equal to 1% of net purchases, up to a maximum of $50,000 of purchases, made each year. Alternatively, customers can elect to receive half their rewards amount as a ‘cashback’ credit to their account and the rest going to purchase carbon offsets.
GE Money chief executive Mike Cutter says the eco Mastercard holders will have a simple and easy way to help save the planet.”By spending on your card, you’ll contribute to projects that offset greenhouse gas emissions and help save the environment,” Mr Cutter said. Mr Cutter said that internationally GE is committed to reducing 10 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gases each year by 2010 – equivalent to taking 1.8 million cars off the road annually. More information is available on their site – GE Money Eco Mastercard
The eco card is part of an overall plan by GE Ecomagination and partner GreenOrder to green the company. The other projects include desalination plants, cleaner and more efficient aircraft jet engines and diesel locomotives, wind turbines, cleaner coal and solar technology, and compact fluorescent light bulbs.
While GE has prioritized pro-environment projects since 2005, it is also known as one of the world’s worst polluters historically. As such, environmentalists have mixed feelings about the new credit card.
“It’s ironic,” says Michael J. Brune of the nonprofit Rainforest Action Network. “GE supplies parts for coal-fired plants, so its credit card offsets emissions it helps create.”
In other words, credit customers may be forking out dollars to help fund General Electric’s expansion and internal emission reduction program. It could even be getting paid twice for those emission reductions as well as claiming them as environmental benefits on its triple bottom line – we simply don’t know.Whack on the greenwash
