Card recycling | Santander UK (2024)

How long do bank cards last?

Most payment cards are made from PVC, which isn’t biodegradable and takes more than 400 years to break down.

Bank cards typically also contain a metal magnetic strip which means they need specialist recycling. They’d end up in landfill without it. As PVC takes so long to break down, without recycling all the cards ever made would still be in existence. With 6 billion payment cards in circulation worldwide in 2020 – that’s a lot of plastic and we want to do something about it.

How can we recycle bank cards?

We’ve designed our very own Santander shredder machines to make it quick, easy and secure to dispose of your old cards.

Simply head to one of our branches taking part in the trial, pop your card in the slot, turn the handle and your card will be cut into over 100 pieces. The machines are manual to be more eco-friendly.

What happens next?

Once you’ve used the card shredder the shredded plastic will make its way to our recycling partner through existing collections and deliveries so that we don’t generate extra carbon.

Our recycling partner will then remove the metal components, melt the plastic and create plastic pellets to be reused.

Spread the word. We want to have the biggest impact we can. So if you or any of your friends or family live near to one of the branches taking part in the pilot and have some expired or no longer used cards, pop in, try out our card recycling machines and help reduce the number of cards going to landfill.