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Whereas performing some last-minute Christmas e-book procuring final weekend, I found in my pockets a long-forgotten and well-worn Indigo reward card. I had no thought when or how I got here by it, or if it nonetheless had any remaining worth.
They’re humorous issues, these reward playing cards, falling someplace between selecting a present that somebody REALLY desires and easily giving them money, the latter an train that, surprisingly, particularly given the bottomless commercialization of Christmas, continues to be thought-about gauche besides within the case of youngsters.
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In my case, past merely being happy that I lastly thought to make use of the remaining card stability — somewhat underneath $10 — was the belief that it simply as simply may have stayed in my pockets perpetually, or at the very least till my youngsters have been pressured to cope with it when closing out my property.
This 12 months marks the thirtieth season of giving and receiving reward playing cards, with U.S. luxurious retailer Neiman Marcus reportedly kicking all of it off with their introduction in 1994, adopted the following 12 months by an analogous however extra widespread rollout by now-defunct Blockbuster Video.
Precisely how lots of the pervasive playing cards are floating round is anybody’s guess, however there’s actually no scarcity. And plenty of of them are in all probability not dissimilar to those that spent years in my pockets, unnoticed, ignored and never doing anybody any good.
Based on the 2023 Retail Council of Canada/Leger vacation procuring survey of two,500 Canadians, performed on-line final summer time, 45 per cent of shoppers anticipated to purchase reward playing cards over the Christmas holidays, every planning to spend about 16 per cent of their gift-giving finances on the issues.
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It’s tough to think about a services or products that may’t be given by way of a present card, from grocery retailer chains to eating places to fuel stations and a lot extra. You possibly can even buy reward playing cards from Molly Maid dwelling cleaners, a thoughtfully type if additionally considerably non-passively judgmental current.
What retains me serious about them, although, isn’t their ubiquity, however reasonably the waste of all of the unused ones.
Canadian retail advisor Doug Stephens this 12 months estimated that reward card income on this nation was about $3.5 billion, and rising at an annual charge of between 5 and eight per cent. That’s a number of plastic, which, to not rain on everybody’s Santa Claus parade, raises the difficulty of their ecological influence.
Assuming that my kitchen scale and math pencil are correct, if each Canadian had only one plastic reward card of their pockets, that will quantity to about 350,000 kilos, or near 160 tonnes, of plastic. That will barely be a drop in comparison with the Nice Pacific rubbish patch, say, however it’s nonetheless nothing to brag about.
Stephens estimates that between 10 and 20 per cent of reward playing cards are by no means redeemed — a boon to the retailers promoting them, for positive, however not a lot to anybody else. It’s, to paraphrase a favorite Tom Waits lyric, like throwing cash off the again of a practice. Present playing cards gathering mud in wallets, workplace desks and kitchen cabinets solely lose their worth to inflation — or worse, if the corporate promoting them goes out of enterprise. Witness the nugatory 20-year-old Blockbuster reward playing cards presently on the market on eBay for a fraction of their authentic face worth (plus delivery). They’re barely invaluable as collectors’ gadgets.
So use ‘em if you happen to received ‘em, or at the very least give them to somebody who will — a meals financial institution or shelter, for instance, or any group that serves the group. We’re throwing away a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} annually, after we could possibly be bettering folks’s lives as a substitute.
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