A New Way To Borrow Green

Term loans and credit lines may be hard to come by, but small businesses are slapping down plastic more than ever. In April, nearly 60% of small businesses were using credit cards to finance their firms, up from 49% in December 2008, according to the National Small Business Association, a trade group.

While there are dozens of cards to choose from, one credit-card company, Brighter Planet in Middlebury, Vt., has a particularly greenish hue.

Launched in early 2008, Brighter Planet issues credit- and-debit-cards (processed through Bank of America ( BAC - news - people )) that let borrowers pile up points that don't go toward cheap airline tickets, but to help fund environmentally friendly projects. At a time when thousands of entrepreneurs are scrapping just to stay solvent, "we've been surprised by how many inquiries we've gotten from small businesses," says Patti Prairie, Brighter Planet's CEO.

This, even though the cards don't have any ostensibly small-biz-related perks. All of Brighter's 100,000 customers pay standard credit and debit card processing fees (a new-registration fee and an ongoing fee with each swipe of the card), and Prairie says the company has been forced to tighten credit like all other card companies over the past year. There is a small marketing upside: Businesses that borrow on Brighter's cards can claim they are doing their part to help the environment.

Brighter Planet gives its cardholders one "EarthSmart" point for every $1 spent. Each point, in theory, offsets a pound of carbon dioxide by investing those dollars in renewable energy projects, mostly wind turbines. A team of five environmental activists, including the dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, and Billy Parish, founder of the Energy Action Coalition, a nonprofit group, vets each project.

Among them: 10 wind turbines in tornado-devastated Greensburg, Kan., enough to supply the entire city's homes and businesses with electricity to spare. More wind turbines built with EarthSmart points will power 15 family farms in Minnesota. Then there's a farm-methane abatement project in Rockwood, Pa., including a generator that combusts the gas and uses it for fertilizer rather than storing it in a lagoon.

Brighter Planet estimates that it has canceled out more than 131 million tons of carbon dioxide. "We don't assume people will make radical changes," says Prairie. "We want to take things you do already and bundle climate capability with them."