Welcome to a regular blog feature called Guilt-Free Green Tips. These will be easy action steps you can take to be a little greener, and each mini post will feature one tip. Choose the ones that appeal to you, and learn what eco benefits a single, simple step can make.
Photo: C x 2/Flickr
Even though I consider myself a bit of a Luddite (I will always prefer reading tangible books to e-books), one of the great things about technology is the ability to eliminate paper waste. Nowadays, banks, credit cards and utilities all offer electronic payment options; signing up usually takes just a few minutes of your time. Save yourself the hassle of misplacing bills, writing checks or buying stamps.
With this simple step, you’ll also save a few other things:
- Paper Waste. The average American family discards 2,460 pounds of paper the every year.
- Trees. If just 20% of Americans switched to online bill payment, two million trees would be saved annually.
- Energy. You lighten the load of the U.S. pulp and paper industry, which is the second largest consumer of energy. Again, if just 20% of Americans switched to online bill payment, we could eliminate 720,000 tons of greenhouse gases and avoid using 135 million gallons of gasoline each year.
- Clutter, Time, Money and Safety. By eliminating piles of paper clutter, you can regain six weeks of your time usually spent looking for important papers, reduce money spent on late fees and reduce identity theft by 85%.
Sources:
http://www.att.com/media/att/2012/support/pdf/Go_Paperless_4_2012.pdf
http://www.napo-gpc.org/about_media.php
I switched all bills possible to paperless billing and pay most of my bills using online pay through my bank.