Green Card argument

THE Foundation for Sustainable Development distributed around 330'000 Green Cards during the first nine months of its existence. It was introduced last June, and 325'456 of them were sold to tourists and 4'956 to residents, according to the Foundation spokesman, Pau Collado. He said that the main objective of this initiative was to generate finances in the medium and long run and commented that these figures meant that the cost of production per card would not be above the initial estimate of four euros a card. However, he said that figures for income and expenditure would be published in June, at the close of the first accounting year. He insisted that it was difficult to know the number of active cards, given that some companies had given them as gifts to their clients and there were other people who had bought them just to show solidarity with the scheme, but they had no intention of using them. Nevertheless the opposition groups criticised the lack of information about the number of cards sold and activated. They also accused the Balearic Government of using the Foundation to hide information about this environmental initiative, which they classed as an “absolute failure”. They also claimed that the Green Card is not an initiative any more, as the Government insists, but a star project whose results were “ridiculous”.