From an article:
In a Nutshell: Most credit cards are made of polyvinyl chloride acetate — more commonly known as PVCA. The acetate in the cards make them difficult to recycle, as it limits the compatibility with the other plastics blended together at recycling plants. Since the material can be difficult — hence, more expensive — to repurpose, only a few companies work to recycle the more than 10 billion credit, debit, gift, and other cards put into circulation each year. Keith Vorst, Director of the Polymer and Food Protection Consortium at Iowa State University recently sat down with us to discuss the future of recycled PVCA and other plastics that he works with on a daily basis. According to his research, technologies currently under development could one day have companies mining the landfills and oceans for old, discarded plastics. //