moving to a better world
Enough Thermal Paper to Keep Us All Warm
One of my favorite daily reads is Umbra who dispenses advice on Grist to readers with environmental dilemmas. It was through reading her response to a question about receipt paper a couple of weeks ago that I learnt that receipt paper is non-recyclable.
After reading the Review on Consumer Change about receipts lengths last week, I decided to investigate some more. Here is the environmental scoop on receipts:
1. According to allEtronic, it takes approximately 15 trees to produce a single ton of paper. Receipt paper demands in the US are 640,000 tons per year. This equates to 9,600,000 trees cut down each year just to produce paper receipts. Another organization NoMoPaper reports 2 million trees are cut down for our annual receipt consumption – regardless of who is right, the number is staggering. You can watch the NoMoPaper video here.
If receipts included only transactional information, how many trees could we save? The recent Review for Sears reported that only 21% of the receipt (7 inches out of 33 inches) was transactional and the remainder promotional. If this is true of all receipts, we could save over 1.5 Million trees a year by including only transactional information (according to the more conservative NoMoPaper estimate). Even if on average, only 25% of receipts had promotional information, that is still 500,000 trees saved.
2. Thermal paper is not recyclable, therefore all of it goes directly to landfills – that is 2 million trees a year in landfills!
3. Thermal paper is coated with BPA (bisphenol-A). Developed as an estrogen replacement, BPA is widely used to line metal cans and in thousands of other household products, including baby bottles, eyeglasses and CDs. It has been detected in nearly all Americans tested. BPA is an endocrine disruptor, which can mimic the body's own hormones and may lead to negative health effects especially when exposure occurs in early development. Many states have banned BPA in infant formula containers, baby bottles, and sippy cups.
Earlier this year, The Endocrine Society released a scientific statement expressing concern over current human exposure to BPA. Research has linked BPA to prostate and breast cancer, obesity and diabetes, early puberty ovarian cysts and uterine fibroids, reduced fertility and miscarriage.
I think everyone can understand the need to stop exposure of BPA to young children and in our food containers, but receipts? Apparently so, Science News reported a concern about this last month in an interview with Scientist John Warner.
The jury might still be out on BPA on receipts but I am convinced that shorter or no receipts are the better way to go. I am advocating to keep the receipts to transactional information only!
What you can do:
• Forgo the paper and subscribe to electronic receipts through companies such as TransactionTree and allEtronic;
• Ask retail stores not to give you receipts;
• Use Consumer Change to educate those companies that do provide paper receipts and advocate for change.
After reading the Review on Consumer Change about receipts lengths last week, I decided to investigate some more. Here is the environmental scoop on receipts:
1. According to allEtronic, it takes approximately 15 trees to produce a single ton of paper. Receipt paper demands in the US are 640,000 tons per year. This equates to 9,600,000 trees cut down each year just to produce paper receipts. Another organization NoMoPaper reports 2 million trees are cut down for our annual receipt consumption – regardless of who is right, the number is staggering. You can watch the NoMoPaper video here.
If receipts included only transactional information, how many trees could we save? The recent Review for Sears reported that only 21% of the receipt (7 inches out of 33 inches) was transactional and the remainder promotional. If this is true of all receipts, we could save over 1.5 Million trees a year by including only transactional information (according to the more conservative NoMoPaper estimate). Even if on average, only 25% of receipts had promotional information, that is still 500,000 trees saved.
2. Thermal paper is not recyclable, therefore all of it goes directly to landfills – that is 2 million trees a year in landfills!
3. Thermal paper is coated with BPA (bisphenol-A). Developed as an estrogen replacement, BPA is widely used to line metal cans and in thousands of other household products, including baby bottles, eyeglasses and CDs. It has been detected in nearly all Americans tested. BPA is an endocrine disruptor, which can mimic the body's own hormones and may lead to negative health effects especially when exposure occurs in early development. Many states have banned BPA in infant formula containers, baby bottles, and sippy cups.
Earlier this year, The Endocrine Society released a scientific statement expressing concern over current human exposure to BPA. Research has linked BPA to prostate and breast cancer, obesity and diabetes, early puberty ovarian cysts and uterine fibroids, reduced fertility and miscarriage.
I think everyone can understand the need to stop exposure of BPA to young children and in our food containers, but receipts? Apparently so, Science News reported a concern about this last month in an interview with Scientist John Warner.
The jury might still be out on BPA on receipts but I am convinced that shorter or no receipts are the better way to go. I am advocating to keep the receipts to transactional information only!
What you can do:
• Forgo the paper and subscribe to electronic receipts through companies such as TransactionTree and allEtronic;
• Ask retail stores not to give you receipts;
• Use Consumer Change to educate those companies that do provide paper receipts and advocate for change.
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