The back of my wallet is full of receipts. Embarrassingly full of little strips of paper that I hardly ever look at except to unfold every few months and remind myself, “Oh yeah, I bought that!” or occasionally, “Did I buy that?!”

Let’s be honest, it’s difficult to go anywhere these days and buy anything without someone forking over a slip of paper, the same one that causes several seconds of panic when you realize you don’t have it accompanying a very valuable purchase. I’ve been there and I’m certainly not saying a good ol’ receipt hasn’t helped me out a time or two when I needed it.

I do, however, believe that although receipts work with you (especially around tax season), they primarily end up a wasteful reminder of a few bucks worth of coffee or lunch that gets tossed out with the rest of the trash. Most of our everyday items have receipts that are rendered meaningless for a variety of reasons: final sales, misplacement, ever-growing online banking and statement options, or convenient reuse as gum wrappers.

For a lot of us, a few dollars here and there isn’t that difficult to keep track of so we don’t bother holding on to a physical record of it. I don’t need a receipt every time I get a cup of coffee. Truthfully, I don’t need a receipt for most of the items I buy in a month’s time because I can track everything I purchase through online banking with just a few clicks. I can also break my spending down into weeks and days and have my bank email me copies.

So what DO I need a receipt for?

Well, aside from returning a new pair of jeans, owning a business, or being a millionaire well above the standard tax deduction cutoff, I have been told numerous times that receipts are beneficial to have in case there’s a mistake or misunderstanding with bank or credit card companies. Noted! But do I really want to keep a box or file full of every single receipt I retain for an entire year? Two years? Five years?

Not really. One, I don’t have the kind of dedication I imagine is necessary to organize every single receipt, especially the coffee ones. Two, most bank and credit card companies would rather avoid a messy mistake on their end (and an angry phone call) and generally do their part to keep those online transaction records and statements as up to date and accurate as possible. Three, I keep a close eye on those accounts – monitoring the activity directly online not only saves the hassle of waiting for statements and for someone else to catch any errors or fraud, it saves contributing to the four billion tons of paper manufactured every year in the United States alone.

In fact, according to the National Recycling Coalition and Earth911, the amount of wood and paper we throw away each year is enough to heat 50 million homes for 20 years. Fifty million! The good news is that the paper industry’s goal is to recover 60 percent of all the paper Americans consume for recycling, which is approximately 60 million tons of paper, by 2012. The best news is that we can all find ways to recycle and we can all reduce our paper trail right this second, starting with bills and receipts.

Take a moment to think about how many unnecessary bits of paper are collecting in our wallets and physical files and folders. Couple that with the many balled up or tumbling sheets of paper being littered across highways and street corners – it’s pretty sad just how much paper we store and eventually waste. These days just saying no to small receipts and being linked to the internet are not only efficient ways to organize and keep tabs on personal accounts, they’re also additional ways to be environmentally friendly.

Did you know that many stores are, or can be, equipped with a point of sale system that will capture information, if you’re willing to give it, and save it to a secure company database for future reference? Say, if you lose your receipt or have a question about a product you bought months ago and can’t remember the model? The digital record of your purchases can assist with these issues. Sure, it seems like a catch to get your address and send you junk mail, but you can request no mail outs and, at the same time, skimp on your receipts. If every store could employ this method and back up the information on secure servers or external drives, think about how much paper we would all be saving.

There are so many small steps we can all take as individuals to cut down on every kind of paper waste before it even becomes waste. If every American recycled one-tenth of their newspapers, we would save about 25 million trees a year. If we recycled all of our junk mail and packaging it would amount to 13,000 pieces per person. If we chose to tell our bank and credit card companies to no longer send us statements by mail and refused most or all of our small every day receipts, consider just how many more tons of paper we’d be saving.

Billions. Billions less paper means millions less metric tons of carbon that contributes to global warming. It means decreasing energy use, more natural resources being made available, preserving landfill space, reducing water pollution, and protecting wildlife.

The next time you’re in your favorite coffee shop, think about whether you need that receipt and what you could be saving if you just said, “No thanks.”

By
Erin McLaughlin
Rain Tees Associate Editor