If you go to a networking event, chances are you still see people handing out small rectangles of card stock like confetti. Then something predictable happens: pockets fill up, drawers fill up and eventually bins fill up. Those tiny cards add up to a surprisingly big environmental problem. For Bizcardy, which exists to replace that old habit with smart digital business cards, the obvious question comes up a lot:
Are digital business cards really better for the environment, or is that just nice marketing Short answer: yes, they genuinely are. Longer answer: the data is pretty eye opening. Paper business cards have a huge hidden footprint. Several independent analyses suggest that around 100 billion paper business cards are printed globally each year.
CleanTech Loops and other sources estimate that producing those cards leads to the loss of around 5 to 6 million trees every year, just for business cards.
HiHello’s 2025 sustainability report takes those high level statistics and runs the numbers in more detail. Based on average card weight and standard paper production data, they estimate that printing 100 billion paper business cards each year requires:
- Around 148,000 to 200,000 tonnes of paper
- Roughly 5 million trees
- About 2.5 to 3.4 billion gallons of water
Paper manufacturing is very resource intensive. Benchmarks from the University of Minnesota put water use at around 17,000 gallons per ton of paper. When you multiply that by the tonnage required for business cards alone, you are talking about billions of gallons of water to support a product that most people keep for a few days.
On top of that, paper production uses energy and chemicals and it contributes to air and water pollution. Sogar Cards’ analysis, which draws on Environmental Paper Network and scientific reviews of the pulp and paper industry, notes that the sector is among the larger industrial consumers of water and a significant source of industrial air pollution globally.
Most paper business cards go straight in the bin
Given all that effort, you would hope those cards at least get used.
They mostly do not.
Studies summarised by Adobe, CreditDonkey and others show that around 80 to 88 percent of business cards are thrown away within a week of being handed out.
HiHello’s modelling combines that discard rate with the average card weight and the global volume of cards. The result:
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Around 262 million pounds (about 119,000 tonnes) of business card waste are created every year
- Almost all of that ends up in landfill or incineration, not in high quality recycling streams
Sogar’s independent calculation, based on a slightly heavier assumed card weight, reaches a similar conclusion, estimating around 176,000 tonnes of waste annually from discarded paper cards.
For an individual, HiHello translate this into a lifetime view. Over a typical 50 year career, someone who uses paper cards is likely to get through at least 12,500 cards, which equates to roughly:
- 0.6 trees
- 250 gallons of water
- 37 pounds of solid waste
- 38 pounds of CO₂ emissions
Now multiply that by every employee in a sales heavy organisation and you start to see why business cards show up in sustainability audits.
Digital business cards cut impact at every stage
Digital business cards are not magic or impact free. They live on servers and are accessed through devices that use electricity. But when you compare the two systems end to end, digital wins very clearly.
Environmental reviews from Virtual Spirit and Niha highlight a few reasons why digital cards have a much lighter footprint than paper alternatives:
No trees, no paper
Digital business cards live as data, not as card stock. There is no need to harvest trees or manufacture paper board for each contact you meet. Analysts estimate that millions of trees a year are cut down to feed paper business card demand alone, so any reduction there matters.
Far less water and chemical use
If you are not making paper, you are not running pulp and paper mills that rely on large volumes of water and often use bleaching agents and other chemicals. That means less strain on local water sources and lower risk of water pollution from effluent.
Almost no physical waste
A paper card can serve one person once. A digital card can be shared indefinitely without anything new being manufactured. Instead of ending up as physical waste, your details live in someone’s contacts app or CRM.
Lower transport emissions
Traditional cards are shipped from printers to offices and then carried around, reordered and shipped again when details change. Digital cards are delivered by link, QR code or tap, so there is no freight associated with reprints.
HiHello show what this looks like when you aggregate the effect. For a 100 person company that would normally order 250 paper cards per employee per year, moving fully to digital business cards can save annually:
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1 tree
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500 gallons of water
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74 pounds of solid waste
- 75 pounds of carbon emissions
Scale that to 10,000 employees and you avoid using around 125 trees, 50,000 gallons of water, more than 7,400 pounds of waste and 7,500 pounds of CO₂ every year, just by changing how you share contact details.
hihello.com
But what about the footprint of digital?
It is fair to ask what sits behind a digital business card:
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Data needs to be stored on servers
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Profiles are loaded on smartphones, which use energy to charge
- Some solutions use reusable NFC cards, which themselves have a material footprint
The key point is that these impacts are shared across many uses. A digital card is a tiny amount of data on a server that is already running for many other purposes. A phone you already charge anyway is being used for a few extra seconds to open a profile.
Even where you use a reusable NFC card as your sharing trigger, you typically use one card for hundreds or thousands of interactions, instead of printing and handing out hundreds or thousands of paper cards. Niha and others highlight that this reuse, combined with the elimination of ongoing printing and shipping, is where most of the environmental benefit comes from.
Studies like HiHello’s therefore treat the marginal impact of hosting and serving digital cards as negligible compared with the very real, very measurable resource use and waste from paper business cards.
The market is already shifting in a greener direction
The environmental case lines up with a clear market shift.
Business card statistics compiled by Soocial, drawing on Businesswire market research, project that the digital business card market will reach around 3.1 billion US dollars by 2027, with double digit annual growth as companies modernise their networking tools.
At the same time, a large share of professionals still rely on paper cards. That means there is a big opportunity for organisations that move early to reduce paper use and position themselves as more sustainable.
Platforms like Bizcardy sit right in the middle of this transition. Bizcardy lets you:
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Create a single digital profile that can be shared as a link, QR code or via a reusable NFC card
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Add your card to Apple Wallet or Google Wallet so you always have it with you
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Update your details once and have those updates appear instantly everywhere your card has been shared - without reprinting anything
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Equip whole teams with consistent, centrally managed digital cards instead of ordering boxes of paper for every new hire or promotion
From an environmental perspective, the important part is that updating your details no longer means throwing away an old stack and printing a new one. You keep the same digital presence, you just change the content behind it.
How to make your networking more sustainable
If you want to move away from paper cards in a practical way, here are a few simple steps:
Start with new joiners and heavy networkers
Sales teams, founders and event regulars typically churn through the most cards. Giving them digital business cards first delivers the biggest early reduction in paper use.
Phase out routine paper reprints
Instead of automatically reordering paper cards when someone changes job title or phone number, switch that moment to a digital setup. For many organisations, this single policy change eliminates a large share of business card orders.
Use NFC or QR as a bridge
Some contacts will still expect a physical interaction. A reusable NFC card or a nicely designed QR code on your phone lock screen gives them that familiar experience without creating more single use paper waste.
Track and talk about the impact
Use estimates from studies like HiHello and Sogar to translate your switch into trees, water, waste and carbon saved over time. That data works well in ESG reports and internal sustainability updates.
Keep a small paper fallback if you must
For certain situations or audiences you may still want a very limited run of paper cards, ideally on recycled or certified stock. The aim is not perfection overnight, it is a clear reduction in waste and resource use.
Conclusion
Paper business cards feel small and harmless, but when you look at the numbers they represent a large, ongoing drain on forests, water and energy, and they quickly become waste. Digital business cards remove almost all of that footprint by eliminating paper, printing and shipping and by turning contact details into reusable, updateable data.
The evidence from multiple independent analyses is consistent: moving from paper to digital business cards reduces tree loss, water use, waste and carbon emissions, especially when entire teams or companies make the switch.
For organisations that care about sustainability, digital business cards are one of those rare changes that are better for the environment, better for users and better for your brand.
References (Harvard style)
Adobe (2016) 4 Business Card Statistics that Will Make You Rethink Your Strategy. Adobe Blog. Available at: https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2016/10/26/4-business-card-statistics-that-will-make-you-rethink-your-strategy
(Accessed: 3 December 2025).
Brabham, M. (2023) Reinventing Business Cards: Environmental Perspectives. Cleantech Loops. Available at: https://www.cleantechloops.com/business-cards-environment/
(Accessed: 3 December 2025).
CreditDonkey (n.d.) Business Card Statistics. CreditDonkey. Available at: https://www.creditdonkey.com/business-card-statistics.html
(Accessed: 3 December 2025).
HiHello (2025) Sustainability Report: Why Digital Business Cards are Better for the Environment. HiHello Blog. Available at: https://www.hihello.com/blog/why-digital-business-cards-are-better-for-the-environment
(Accessed: 3 December 2025).
Niha (n.d.) The Environmental Benefits of Digital Business Cards. Niha Blog. Available at: https://niha.io/environmental-benefits-of-digital-business-cards/
(Accessed: 3 December 2025).
Sogar Cards Limited (2022) The Environmental Impacts of Paper and Digital Business Cards. Sogar Blog. Available at: https://www.sogar.cards/blogs/blog2/
(Accessed: 3 December 2025).
Soocial (2025) 25 Business Card Statistics to Make You Do a Double-Take (2025). Soocial. Available at: https://www.soocial.com/business-card-statistics/
(Accessed: 3 December 2025).
Virtual Spirit Technology Sdn. Bhd. (2023) The Environmental Impacts of Paper and Digital Business Cards. Virtual Spirit. Available at: https://virtualspirit.me/insights/313/the-environmental-impacts-of-paper-and-digital-business-cards
(Accessed: 3 December 2025).