The change from paper receipts, why we should stop the usage of paper receipts

We’ve sneaked into the neighborhood convenience shop for a piece of fruit or a fast fix of chocolate, swiped our cards, scrunched up the excessively long receipt that the self-service machine reeled off, and carelessly stuffed it into our pockets. There is almost little likelihood that we even considered this piece of paper as we went about our days.

We have all done it. Most receipts are discarded and never looked at again so why use them?

It is dangerous to the environment & a form of mass pollution!

To put it in perspective, to produce the ‘poisonous littering’ paper receipts, just the US uses more than 3 million trees and 9 billion gallons of water annually. Now that isn’t very environmentally friendly, nor does it contribute to the planet, rather damages it drastically per year. Trees are cut to make paper for receipt machines & fresh water supply is used excessively to produce such products. It is sickening.

Put the water & trees aside, to produce such paper receipts, the amount of co2 gases which are produced as a by-product is obnoxiously high which is poisoning our fresh air & ecosystem. How much co2 gas could that possibly be right? To put things in perspective, the production of receipts generates over 4 billion pounds of CO2 emissions and 302 million pounds of solid trash (the equivalent of 450,000 cars on the road). 

Another bad fact about paper receipts is the amount of landfill it produces. People discard receipts immediately, often dropping them or putting them in the bin that makes up millions of kilograms of landfill.

Are paper receipts used correctly or beneficial these days?

It is stated that 9 out of 10 consumers in the US & around the world do not want paper receipts anymore but rather want to move to a more eco-friendly, paperless electronic form of receipts.

Often, consumers complain that they had misplaced or lost a receipt for a product or purchase of services within a week. This is important if you have to do refunds or prove that you had paid but what if you lost the receipt? It is now invalid. This wouldn’t happen with electronic backed-up receipts which can be stored in more than one storage device or cloud storage device.

Besides, the world is moving away from traditional manual style receipts such as paper receipts & adopting an application-based receipt storage system like QuickBooks to name one.

This change is out phasing the traditional paper receipt method which in after is helping the environment recover from such landfill pollution, air pollution, or the degradation of our forests & water supplies.

It is safe to say that paper receipts are not as beneficial as they used to be back before the technological boom of the 2000s however some companies are still stuck with outdated POS systems which do not allow for electronic eco-friendly paperless receipts to be issued like a regular paper receipt would be. So to sum up, there is still relevance of paper receipts in today’s society however it is slowly being phased out by the more up-to-date electronic paperless eco-friendly receipt solutions.

Conclusion

The advantages of doing away with paper receipts go beyond environmental issues, although they do raise issues like how to deal with people who don’t have access to the internet and privacy issues. 

Traditional paper receipts produce so many harmful factors to the environment such as poisonous co2 gases which measure up to 4 billion pounds a year which is the same amount as 450,000 automobiles driving around all year round, degrades water sources & our forests to supply companies with paper & makes up millions of kilograms of landfill per year on our beautiful planet.

The switch to the electronic eco-friendly paperless receipt systems will help reduce the amount of co2 gases produced whilst manufacturing paper receipts to almost 0, will help produce more trees and grow our forests whilst retaining our fresh water sources & will help combat the millions of kilograms that paper receipts produce in landfill per year on our planet.

References

Breyer, M. (2020, January 15). Why do we still have paper receipts? Treehugger. Retrieved August 25, 2022, from https://www.treehugger.com/why-do-we-still-have-paper-receipts-4854765 

Weingarth, P. (2021, August 2). 5 reasons why businesses should give paper receipts the flick this financial year. Business IT. Retrieved August 25, 2022, from https://www.bit.com.au/guide/5-reasons-why-businesses-should-give-paper-receipts-the-flick-this-financial-year-568136 

Why you should replace paper receipts with digital receipts? Blog. (2020, June 30). Retrieved August 25, 2022, from https://www.logicerp.com/blog/2020/06/30/why-you-should-replace-paper-receipts-with-digital-receipts/