You will see two numbers on almost every page about paper business cards: 10 billion printed a year in the US, and 88% thrown away within a week. We tried to find where they come from. The earliest copy we found is a Statistic Brain page from July 2012, which credits CNN and two blogs and cites no study. Adobe’s blog repeated the same figures in 2016, also without a source. We could not find research behind either number, so we don’t use them here.
The Environmental Cost of Paper Business Cards
What we can estimate is how much paper goes into a business card. The figures below are an estimate, not a measurement: one number is sourced, and the rest rests on two assumptions of ours, shown here.
- One tree makes roughly 8,333 sheets of copier paper (Conservatree).
- Our assumption: one sheet prints about 10 business cards, allowing for margins and spacing.
- Our assumption: copier paper stands in for card stock, because we found no equivalent figure for card stock.
- On those assumptions, one tree makes an estimated 83,330 business cards.
On the same estimate, if 1 million people each skipped just one 50-pack of paper business cards, that would save around 600 trees.
Swft Connect’s Mission for a Greener Future
Swft Connect’s eco pillar is connecting people, protecting the planet. The platform offers digital business cards with Apple Wallet integration, NFC-enabled cards, QR sharing and instant contact updates.
Swft Connect is 100% paperless and replaces thousands of paper cards.
More Than Just Paper Savings
Paper cards cost more than trees:
- Water – Making one A4 sheet of printing paper takes between 2 and 13 litres of water, depending on the paper and where it’s made (van Oel and Hoekstra, 2010).
- Energy – Paper is one of the six most energy-intensive manufacturing industries in the US (EIA, 2021).
- Carbon emissions – Printing and shipping paper cards adds carbon emissions at every step.
Meanwhile, your digital business card lives on your phone or smart device – always available, always up-to-date, and never tossed in the bin.
Join the Paperless Revolution
By choosing Swft Connect’s digital business cards, you’re cutting paper out of how you network.
Sources:
- Conservatree – How much paper can be made from a tree?
- van Oel and Hoekstra – The green and blue water footprint of paper products (Water Footprint Network, 2010)
- US Energy Information Administration – Today in Energy, 19 April 2021
- Statistic Brain – Business card statistics (July 2012, archived copy)
- Adobe Blog – 4 business card statistics (October 2016)
