Yes, even those receipts.

All those slick receipts tracking all those purchases really
do add up.

According to the Environmental Defense website, Wal-Mart has
over 757,750,000 customers every month and the average receipt given to
customers is 10 inches long.. Based on those figures, Wal-Mart alone uses
895 tons of receipt paper per month out of the total of approximately 200,000
tons of thermal receipt paper sold in the U.S. each year.

So at a rate of 895 tons of paper per month and 15 trees it
takes on average to make a ton of paper we’re talking 13,425 trees per
month. Over the course of a single year, Wal-Mart has to use 161,100
trees to provide their customers with a paper receipt.

Remember when we thought we were headed to the “paperless
office” not so much in retrospect…..well now there is an emerging technological
fix by a company call allEtronic to eliminate
the millions of receipts printed each and every day. Basically they propose moving the whole mess out
of your wallet, purse or pocket and onto the internet. And as a guy who has been making a lot of
trips to the home improvement store to finish up a project that sounds pretty
efficient.

The moral of this story is pretty basic – using less paper
is a good thing. When you rank possible
environmental actions in increasing order of environmental benefit – reduction is
the best. So best of luck to the folks
at allEtronic and let’s hope we can say goodbye to the paper receipt.