There are more than 97 million debit cards in circulation in the UK, and the majority of them are made from first-use PVC. Starling says the new rPVC cards will reduce demand for new plastic production.

Each kilo of rPVC will replace its equivalent of new PVC in the market, with two kilos of CO2 being saved for each kilo of the material used, states the bank. Only 25% of the card is made up of unavoidable non-recycled elements, including the card’s chip and magstripe.

Existing customers will receive the recycled card when their current one expires and new customers will be issued the card upon joining the bank.

The rPVC used for the card is drawn from Mastercard’s Sustainable Materials Directory, a directory of sustainable materials and vendors for card products.

Paul Trueman, SVP, product advancement, cyber & tntelligence at Mastercard says: “We are helping banks like Starling offer more eco-friendly cards to consumers - put simply, it’s better for the environment, it’s better for business and it meets evolving consumer needs.”

Along with 14 other high growth tech companies, Starling Bank earlier this month joined the ‘Tech Zero taskforce’ to help tackle the climate crisis and last year started planting thousands of trees to help improve forest protection.

Anne Boden, CEO and founder of Starling Bank says: “The environment is important to our customers, so launching a recycled plastic debit card was the right thing to do. This new card comes with no deterioration in technical quality or capability, it simply supports people in their journey to become more green. We’re proud to be a branchless, paperless bank that runs on renewable energy. And now we’re delighted that we’re building on this with our new recycled cards.”