Environmental Impact of Paper Receipts
Many rarely consider the environmental effects of paper receipts or how many they actually accumulate each month. Over 300 billion paper receipts are printed annually in the US alone, using 25 million trees, 18 billion liters of water, and 22 million barrels of oil. Did you know this? We didn't either. These little pieces of paper can accumulate. In the US, receipt paper was utilized in an estimated 400,000 metric tonnes in 2020 alone. That is equivalent to nearly 2,000 blue whales in weight! That's accurate. A little slip of paper is accumulating weight equal to whales.
Thermal receipts are also covered in BPA, a non-recyclable chemical that means they all wind up in landfills. In a landfill, 2,000 blue whales would occupy a lot of space.
Don't overlook the impact of deforestation either. As they operate as a sort of filter by absorbing CO2 from the air, forests are essential for the environment. Actually, a single tree has the capacity to absorb the emissions from 5,400 digital receipt emails sent each year. Just consider the effects of cutting them down.