andrewteman.org

I will be the first to admit that I am not someone that goes nuts trying to lead a green lifestyle. I mean, I do the basics. I recycle plastics and glass at home, I drive a fuel efficient car and have looked at some hybrids for my next purchase, and I re-use all of my plastic grocery bags. I think I am like most people, green when it is convenient and reasonable, but not necessarily one that goes out of his way to make an environmental statement.

That said, there are two things that drive me nuts when it comes to wasted paper.

The first is ATM receipts. I am a Bank Of America customer, and have noticed that every BOA ATM that I visit has one thing in common - the trash baskets are overflowing with, and the floor is covered with, scattered ATM receipts. I, like most others, follow the same routine with every transaction. Put card in, deposit/withdraw money, take card, take receipt, throw receipt in trash. The lifespan of that receipt is less than 3 seconds in almost every case. I never keep them, and usually handle them just long enough to move them from the dispensing slot to the trash can below. What a waste.

Though the amount printed on the receipt is sometimes of interest, why can’t I just view this on the screen and opt to not get a receipt? As far as I can tell, with BOA at least, there is no chance to decline the receipt, it just comes out no matter what. And in the event that you make multiple transactions, say a deposit, followed by an immediate withdrawal, you get two receipts.

I am totally making up numbers here, but say the BOA ATM near my office handles 100 or so transactions per day, and say that is the average (again, totally flawed numbers I know) across the 17,000+ ATMs in the BOA network alone (they claim this number on their website). That is 170,000 receipts printed per day. Not an insignificant amount of paper produced from just this one bank, just from ATMs, just in a single day.

What if Bank Of America changed to an opt-in receipt system, as in you get no receipt unless you request one during the transaction? How much paper could be saved each year? It seems like a lot. Perhaps I am missing something here, but it strikes me as one of those really simple things that could have a huge impact on the environment.

The second waste item is phone books. Apparently the new Yellow Pages books came out last week for 2008. I know this not because I use them or care, but because I have seen a stack of them on my building’s stoop, and in the lobbies of every other building in Boston this week. They get dropped off at every residential building in the city, the number of phone books equaling the number of units in the building. My building having six units gets six phone books, the neighboring building gets probably forty or so of the big yellow books.

Like the ATM receipt, in my neighborhood specifically (which is about 80% comprised of people under the age of 35), the phone books exist simply to be disposed of. The life cycle is simple. They get printed and dropped off at my building. They will sit there untouched for about two weeks, and eventually someone, probably the building super, will move them back behind the building next to the dumpster and they will become trash. Spines never cracked, pages never viewed.

Now I know that unlike the ATM receipt, there are some economic pressures at play here that will keep these books showing up on my steps for years to come. The Yellow Page business is just that, a business. The Yellow pages makes money from ad sales, and ad sales is driven by distribution and circulation. However, unlike some magazines and newspapers for instance, distribution and circulation for the Yellow Pages involves leaving giant stacks of these books on the steps of people who don’t care about, and will never see their contents. Once the truck drops off the book, it is part of a circulation number that an ad sales person can use to sell ads into next year’s edition, and the cycle continues.

Although it would make much more environmental and logical sense to move the Yellow Pages to an opt-in model as well (no phone books delivered unless you request one for free), it doesn’t make business sense. The Yellow Pages knows that it if residents in my neighborhood stopped receiving the Yellow Pages unless they asked for it, no one would ask for it (or almost no one would ask for it), effectively cutting off their circulation numbers at the knees, killing their ability to sell ads and thus killing their ability to survive.

Yellowbook.com has a great graphic showing the life cycle of a directory. Fittingly, it omits the step that would involve a consumer using the book. At least they understand their own process!

So maybe there is more hope for opt-in ATM receipts than there is for opt-in phone books, but moving both things to this model would make me happy, and would save one hell of a lot of paper as well.