Paper receipts and the environment
The environmental impact of receipts
The worldwide production of paper receipts could be between 0.9 and 2.2 million metric tons extrapolating from statistics from the United States and the UK.
That's a lot of little pieces of paper. With standard rolls of receipts, that works out at about 900 thousand kilometers (or 550 thousand miles). That's more than enough to go from the earth to the moon and back again.
Actually the global production consumption of paper is at around 400 million tons per year! So even though those little slips of paper seem to be every where they actually don't nearly count for even 1% of usage.
However there's a more sinister and surprising problem at hand.
Receipts might be poisoning you
Thermal paper is commonly used in cash registers and points of sale to print receipts. It's basically regular paper that's coated with chemicals that will change colour when exposed to heat. The text and numbers on your receipts aren't actually ink but the parts of the thermal paper that have been exposed to heat.
Unfortunately, some of the active ingredients in thermal paper can be toxic. Notably they can use phenols such as Bisphenol A (BPA) and Bisphenol S (BPS). These are known as "endocrine disruptors". Basically they mess with hormones via your endocrine system and the possible affects are cancerous, birth defects, and growth and developmental disorders.
These poisons can be absorbed by touch and it has been shown that workers that are required to frequently touch BPA laced paper have higher traces of the substance in their bloodstream. It's actually recommended that pregnant women don't frequently handle such thermal paper because of the potential for birth defects.
Don't touch your receipts
Rather than handling physical receipts it's we at Beancount.me recommend that you either scan or take a photo of your receipt and upload it to our system. Everybody should minimise touching thermal paper and receipts.
Employers have a duty of care to their employees and shouldn't expect them to be happy touching thermal paper. Rather than keeping a filing cabinet filled with slips of poison, digitise your data with Beancount.me.
We don't want to blow our own trumpet, but Beancount.me doesn't just save time but it can save lives too.
Receipts aren't recyclable
Thermal paper turns out to be a double edged sword in terms of environmental problems because those toxic chemicals aren't recyclable. The active chemicals can survive the recycling process and will contaminate the resulting recycled paper produced.
The most common use of recycled paper is for use in offices which means that it's destined to be handle by anybody who works in on office or has to deal with bureaucracy.
Recycled paper is also used in toilet paper, tissue paper and napkins and nobody wants to be rubbing poison on the most sensitive parts of their body.
How do I dispose of receipts
It's recommended that thermal paper should be thrown in the trash and will hopefully be incinerated. Incineration is the best way to get rid of the toxic material (see this paper).
A lot of trash will end up in land fill. The toxic chemical in questions can still be a problem because they'll concentrate into what we appealingly call "land fill leachate". If you're familiar with the term then you'll know that it's probable that this will eventually leak from any landfill. However, it's still easier to manage this problem than by allowing the phenols back into circulation through the waste recycling system.
Is all this legal?
Yes, these toxic materials can be used legally for receipts. The truth is that most people aren't exposed to these materials enough to be in any danger. For most consumers this will never be a significant problem
Increasingly, governments are worried about the issue. BPA's are often illegal when used in the production of childrens' toys or babys' bottles. Several countries and several US states have looked at the issue of thermal receipts.
The EU recently entered into force a ban on BPA's in thermal paper receipts (see here. Mostly vendors are just replacing the BPA with BPS which might be just as harmful.
Given that the thermal paper industry might be worth around $5.5 billion annually, it's unlikely that there'll be a disruptive change any time soon.
The solution to the environmental impact of receipts
Beancount.me will digitize your receipts
It's best to minimise human contact with receipts until a major change comes. There are also some competitors offering decent solutions for big enterprise and some expensive accounting packages will also offer an acceptable digitization plug-in.
Can we ban poison laced receipts?
It's not unreasonable and Green America have a big campaign to get rid of receipts. This may happen in the future but given that society still relies on tiny pieces of paper it could take while before there's a sea change.
Right now there's a few potential replacements.
Digital receipts are here to stay
Digital receipts are popular right now and with good reason. There's no poisonous paper and most people carry a smartphone everywhere.
Sellers can issue digital receipts with many services such as Flux. Many point of sale services such as Square also offer digital receipts which can just be added on to existing services.
Here's just a small list of shops and vendors offering e-receipts (at the time of writing): * Mothercare, * Macy's, * Top Shop, * Argos, * Debenhams, * Gap, * Clarks, * New Look, * Halfords, * Nike, * and many many more.
e-receipts and unethical marketing
Most e-receipts are sent by e-mail and this unfortunately creates an opportunity for unscrupulous companies to get some more data from you.
Here in Ireland cases have been reported about unwanted marketing materials sent to customers e-mail after they gave their e-mails in order to receive their electronic receipts as reported by thejournal.ie and Fora.
3rd parties
A survey by Which magazine shows that customers are reluctant to avail of e-receipts because they're worried about privacy issues.
Customers need to be savvy about the fact that once data goes up into an advertiser's database that it might be there forever. Even if the company behaves ethically there's a good possibility that it will eventually be sold by new management or leaked or stolen by malicious hackers.
If you're not comfortable sharing your e-mail with any number of faceless third parties then you shouldn't.
GDPR is a good thing
Thankfully there's new thinking about how your data can be stored or used and it can be seen in great new legislation such as the GDPR.
Under GDPR it's your right to get a copy of data about you stored by a company and to have it deleted. These includes the right to be removed from advertising databases and unsubscribe from marketing mailing lists.
Dynamic e-receipts
Vendors could offer so-called dynamic receipts which can be captured in a QR code or even a simple alpha-numeric code that can be used to access the receipt on-line. This is great for privacy but it does allow the possibility for the vendors to change or delete the data.
One of Beancount.me's leading products offers the ability to generate dynamic receipts for vendors and also have dynamic receipts statically recorded on your customer's Beancount.me account to be stored forever and you can contact us to find out more.
Physical receipts are a right
Despite the problems, physical receipts shouldn't be going anywhere. It's not just us at Beancount.me that think like this according to this Forbes article.
In fact the Choose Paper organisation believe that it should be a right to have access to a paper slip. They're simple and useful and and everybody knows the score. Even though the fade or get lost over time they're an effective way to verify purchases.
Environmental concerns are not the end of the argument because there exist plenty of alternatives to thermal paper receipts and there is even phenol-free thermal paper.
Physical cash means physical receipts
It seems logical that there's a connection between paper money and paper proof of purchase. You can choose to transact electronically or with tangible money.
It's a hot topic but it seems like well have physical cash for the forseeable future. It might be a question of technological inclusion because not everybody has access to the IT and communications infrastructure we take for granted. Homeless people often have no access and anybody with a visual impairment will prefer something tangible.
Physical cash is inherently private and that appeals to lots of markets. Nobody talks about the size of the black market economy which deals in illegal products like illegal drugs but lots of our society relies on this to earn a living and it forms a hidden prop up for the legal economy.
Here's just a few of the interesting discussions in the media on the exagerated demise of cash:
Crypto-currency and receipts
Can crypto-currencies get rid of the need for receipts? The answers "no" because it's not the same thing. Crypto is genius but it only records the financial part of a transaction. You might still need a receipt to prove the exchange of goods or services.
The blockchain!
The great thing about electronic currency is that the blockchain. You can think of it as a giant ledger that records all payments from any one wallet to any other wallet.
So proof of payment with the blockchain is easier than ever because it's public. It's like your credit card statement but it's arguably easier to access.
Smart contracts
If you're familiar with the Etherium currency then you might know about "smart contracts". It's a kind of transaction can execute logic not unlike a mini-computer program. It's well... smarter than your average transaction. Just think of an escrow account that where you don't need a third party to check if a payout should go ahead because the money is smart enough to know itself!
This could be helpful in cases where we don't expect receipts now. Etherium talks about an automated vending machine that has a smart contract that could refund a transaction if it's unable to deliver the product. It would mean an end to physically wrestling a big box to shake your sugary treat out.
Smart contracts could replace proof of purchase if people understand and accept them.
Conclusion
The environmental impact of receipts is not as big a problem as you might think and it's probably just because receipts are small and light.
The dark surprise is that receipts can pack a poison punch and that they cannot be recycled.
With advances in e-receipts and crypto-currencies we might see a reduction in the environmental impact but it appears that physical receipts are here to stay.
Try not to touch receipts whenever it can be avoid. We think you should digitise your receipts using Beancount.me to avoid handling them too much and you can take advantage of reporting, searching and sharing at the same time.