Green Daily

Did you ever return home from a stay at a hotel with the key in your back pocket? You are not alone. Those plastic key cards get tossed in the trash and never thought of again. The average 200 room hotel goes through 12,000 plastic keys annually. That means that roughly 1,300 tons of non-biodegradable, plastic key cards go into landfills each year in the United States alone. Sustainable Cards has addressed this issue and their biodegradable key cards are a feature of this years Democratic National Convention.

Made from wood harvested from sustainable forests, these new key cards can be printed with any hotel logo. The website claims that the wood cards are more environmentally friendly than "Corn-cards or even recycled plastic or paper cards." Considering that the wood is harvested from as far away as Africa, transported, stamped with an ink logo (no indication what type of ink is used) and then may or may not end up in a landfill (where it can sit for years and years) ... I'm wondering how that is better than using domestically recycled plastic or recycled paper? Even corn based cards are biodegradable and they can be manufactured domestically.

Granted, many of the key cards from the Democratic National Convention will end up as souvenirs and eventually find themselves on eBay. However, I wonder if wood cards are really the best way to green-up a hotel room. It seems to like that the DNC has been greenwashed.

[via: Water Logged]