Swedish mPOS vendor iZettle has launched a recycled card reader made from fishing ropes and nets collected from the North and Baltic seas.
The creation of the device follows research stating that 46% of the five trillion pieces of plastic polluting the ocean is made up of old fishing nets. IZettle says that up to 75% of the Ocean Reader is made using recycled ocean litter.
Today, there are almost 125 million card readers in the world, and this number is expected to grow by six percent on average every year. IZettle's ambition is that all new products it launches will include recycled materials by 2021.
Jacob de Geer, the co-founder of iZettle, says, “When it comes to things like sustainability, we have a responsibility to do all we can. I’m proud that iZettle is launching the world's first card reader made of recycled ocean plastics, but at the same time, it's a failure of the entire industry that this is only happening now, in 2019. We all have to do better.”
The Ocean Reader comes with a charging dock, which is also made from ocean plastic, and will retail at £98+VAT. IZettle says it will donate 20% of the sale price of each Reader to organisations committed to removing plastic from the oceans.
Earlier this year, CPI Card Group introduced a payments card, called Second Wave, with a core made from recovered ocean-bound plastic.