Your credit card can help save the planet. That’s the message companies are pitching to consumers as they roll out new credit cards designed to cash in on people’s worries about global warming.

These “green” cards allow users to channel a percentage of their spending toward efforts to cut greenhouse-gas emissions. General Electric Co.’s Earth Rewards MasterCard, launched in July by the company’s GE Money unit, targets as much as 1% of total spending on the card toward emission-reduction projects.Bank of America Corp. followed in November with its own green card, Brighter Planet Visa, which matches every dollar spent with one point that can be accumulated and traded in for “carbon offsets.” Carbon offsets are meant to reduce the impact of emissions made somewhere else — such as by planting trees. Additionally, Storm Lake, Iowa, savings bank MetaBank, a unit of Meta Financial Group Inc., in August launched its GreenPay MasterCard, which also allows users to accumulate carbon offsets with each purchase.[...]

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