Standing in line at Staples last week, the economic side of the debate reared its head. The gentleman in front of me purchased a pack of 8 rolls of receipts. The final bill came to $32.39 with tax. The fiscal toll on small business owners adds up over time. While an electronic system may have upfront costs, it should not have the recurring expense of paper receipts; not to mention the ink needed to print them.

Check out the graphic below for the results. More than 225 people took part. Thanks to all those that voted.

- Eric Wilson

[Pie Chart: Courtesy of Houston Neal]
[Image source]

• Climate Change
• The Future of Automobiles
• Race to Lead the Second Green Revolution
• Economic Growth and the Clean Energy Economy
• How Do You Get to Work?
• Future of High Speed Rail in America
• Door to Door Recycling: Who Should Foot the Bill?
• America’s Energy Future

Today’s post deals with another website’s poll. The website Software Advice has posted the following question: “Do you support getting rid of paper receipts?” To vote on their poll click here.

The following are a few highlights from their post as to the amount of paper consumed by printing receipts. The points come from AllEtronic.

50% of forests have been cleared and 50% of that is for paper. 9 million trees a year, just for paper. 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 millions trees cut down each year just to produce paper receipts.

It takes approximately 390 gallons of oil to produce a single ton of paper. At 640,000 tons of thermal receipt paper demanded per year, that’s 249,600,000 gallons of oil used during production. That much oil could produce 115,885,714 gallons of gas that could fill 7,023,376 gas tanks (assuming an average tank size of 16.5 gallons).

The amount of CO2 emitted by producing one ton of receipt paper is equivalent to the amount of exhaust a car emits while driving for an entire year. That’s 640,000 cars driving 24/7 for an entire year.

It takes approximately 19,075 gallons of H2O to produce a single ton of paper. This equates to 1,220,800,000 gallons of H2O used during the production process of receipt paper. That’s a lot of showers and swimming pools without water.

Approximately 2,278 lbs of trash is produced while producing a single ton of receipt paper. This means 1,457,920,000 lbs of trash are being fed into our landfill. This produces enough CO2 emissions to significantly damage the earth’s ozone layer, leading to global warming.

- Eric Wilson

[Image source]

(polls)