Is an eSIM Better for the Environment Than a Physical SIM?

Yes, by a measurable margin. An independent, ISO-standard lifecycle assessment by Fraunhofer IZM found a single eSIM produces 46% less CO2 than a physical SIM over a typical three-year lifespan (123g vs. 229g CO2-equivalent), mainly because a physical card needs plastic, packaging and shipping that a downloaded profile, like co:sim's, skips entirely.

#The longer answer: where the emissions savings actually come from

The comparison isn't a marketing estimate. Fraunhofer IZM, an independent German research institute, ran the study for Giesecke+Devrient, itself a major physical SIM card manufacturer with every incentive to want the opposite result, following the ISO 14040/14044 standard for life-cycle assessment and reviewed by an external panel (Giesecke+Devrient, Fraunhofer IZM study). The gap is concentrated almost entirely in one stage: 59% of a physical SIM's emissions happen during production, versus just 2% for an eSIM. A physical card has to be stamped out of PVC plastic, printed, packaged and shipped to a store or a customer; an eSIM profile is data sent over a network the phone is already connected to.

Multiply that per-card difference by the scale of the industry and the numbers get large. Roughly 4.5 billion physical SIM cards are manufactured worldwide every year, contributing more than 18,000 tons of plastic waste on top of their production emissions (1GLOBAL, eSIMs and the environment). Most of that plastic is a PVC card body designed to be punched out once, used, and thrown away, since SIM cards aren't accepted in most household recycling streams. An eSIM has no equivalent card to discard: the profile lives on a chip already built into the phone, so switching networks or plans doesn't create new physical waste the way swapping a SIM card does.

#Does this mean a physical SIM is always the worse choice?

Not quite, and the honest caveat matters here: the SIM itself, physical or embedded, is a tiny fraction of a phone's total environmental footprint. Manufacturing the phone, its battery and its screen dwarfs the emissions difference between SIM formats, so switching to eSIM is a genuine, real, small reduction, not a substitute for the much bigger impact of how long you keep a device before replacing it. The eSIM's own footprint is also almost entirely downstream rather than upstream: with only 2% coming from production, nearly all of it reflects ordinary day-to-day network use, the same energy cost every connection carries regardless of which SIM format delivers it. Choosing an eSIM over a physical card is a straightforwardly better option on the numbers, just not a large lever on its own.

#FAQ

#How much CO2 does switching from a physical SIM to an eSIM actually save?

Based on Fraunhofer IZM's independent lifecycle assessment for Giesecke+Devrient, one eSIM produces about 106 grams less CO2-equivalent than one physical SIM card over a typical three-year usage period (123g versus 229g). That's a 46% reduction per SIM, driven almost entirely by skipping the plastic manufacturing, printing and shipping a physical card requires. It's a modest number for any single traveler buying one eSIM, but the SIM card industry issues roughly 4.5 billion physical cards a year, so the same percentage reduction applied at that scale adds up to a meaningful amount of avoided plastic and emissions if eSIM adoption keeps growing the way industry data suggests it is. The 59%-versus-2% production-stage split is the clearest way to see why: almost the entire physical-card footprint sits in manufacturing and distribution, the exact steps a downloaded eSIM profile never goes through.

#Does a travel eSIM like co:sim's have the same environmental benefit as a regular carrier eSIM?

Yes, the underlying mechanism is identical: no plastic card is manufactured, packaged or shipped either way, since a co:sim eSIM is delivered as a QR code by email within seconds of checkout rather than mailed or handed over at a counter. Where it differs slightly from a long-term carrier eSIM is reuse: a phone plan eSIM might stay installed on one device for years, while a travel eSIM is typically installed once per trip. That doesn't erase the benefit, since the physical-card alternative (a tourist SIM bought at an airport kiosk) still involves the same plastic production and shipping a phone-plan SIM does, just for a shorter period of use. If anything, a one-trip physical SIM is a slightly worse comparison than a long-term carrier SIM, since its manufacturing footprint gets spread across days of use instead of years, making the per-day emissions of a plastic card even higher for a traveler than for a resident.

#Does using an eSIM reduce e-waste, not just emissions?

Yes, in the sense that there's no physical card to become waste in the first place. A discarded SIM card is largely PVC plastic and a small embedded chip, and most municipal recycling programs don't accept it, so it typically ends up in general waste rather than being recycled. An eSIM profile can be erased, replaced or reinstalled entirely through software, on the same chip already built into the phone, so switching plans or providers doesn't generate a new piece of physical waste each time the way replacing a SIM card does. The phone itself still becomes e-waste eventually, but that outcome is unrelated to which SIM format it used along the way. A physical SIM tray also requires a small mechanical ejector pin mechanism built into the phone, a component an eSIM-only design can skip entirely, a minor additional material saving on the device side that the per-card comparison above doesn't even capture.

#Is there any environmental downside to eSIM technology?

The main one is indirect rather than a flaw in the technology itself: an eSIM-only phone can't easily be handed down with a working physical SIM swapped in, and a phone that only supports eSIM in some markets but not others (due to regulatory restrictions on eSIM-only devices in a few countries) can complicate reuse or resale internationally, which matters for keeping devices in circulation longer, itself a bigger sustainability lever than the SIM format. The Fraunhofer IZM study's own numbers don't identify any stage where an eSIM performs worse than a physical card; the environmental case for eSIM over physical SIM is straightforward on the evidence available, even if it's a smaller effect than headlines sometimes suggest.

#Does choosing an eSIM for one trip actually make a difference, or is it too small to matter?

On its own, one eSIM instead of one physical SIM saves roughly 106 grams of CO2-equivalent and skips a few grams of plastic, genuinely small at the individual level. It's honest to say the bigger sustainability decisions in travel are things like flight choices and how long you keep your phone before upgrading, not which SIM format you use for a week abroad. That said, it's a real reduction with no downside or extra cost, since an eSIM, like a co:sim Japan eSIM or any of its 190+ destinations, works the same way a physical tourist SIM does but skips the plastic card, the packaging and the counter queue, so there's no real trade-off involved in choosing it. Think of it less as a headline climate decision and more as a small, consistent default worth choosing every time it's available, the same way carrying a reusable water bottle doesn't solve climate change on its own but is still the better default choice.

Every co:sim eSIM already skips the plastic card by design, so it's one less thing to think about before you fly.