John Dietz, VP, SAP Concur Labs
With all that’s going on in the world, you might think that paper receipts would be at the bottom of the list when it comes to righting the ship. However, those little slips of paper have a big impact when it comes to environmental stewardship: In the United States alone, paper receipt production uses an estimated 12.4 million trees,13.2 billion gallons of water, and emits 4 billion pounds of CO2 each year.
Additionally, over 90% of paper receipts are coated with BPA or BPS – known disruptors of the endocrine system. The health implications of this are astounding, with retail employees and workers frequently exposed to paper receipts often carrying higher than 30% more BPA and BPS in their systems than individuals without that level of exposure.
So, why are we still using paper receipts? Great question.
Why We Should Be Eliminating Paper Receipts
The benefits of eliminating paper receipts extend beyond environmental concerns, but do open up questions about how to address individuals without digital access, as well as privacy concerns (if I provide my email address for a receipt, does that mean I’m also being added to a promotional email list? Will my information be sold to anyone else?).
These are important topics that will most certainly be considered by those crafting legislation and guidelines around this subject.
Following are just a few of the advantages of eliminating paper receipts:
1. Paperless Receipts Increase Efficiency and Save Big Money
Whether at home or at work, sorting through paper receipts can be time-consuming and unproductive. In our personal lives, we might tuck a receipt away, then forget where we put it. At work, inputting piles of receipts into an expense report is time consuming.
Paperless systems like emails and databases can make sorting receipts simple and reliable. In large organizations, permissioned access to receipts can actually provide a better safeguard than locking them in a room or file cabinet somewhere.
Some retailers have started offering options around your proof of purchase, like having your receipt emailed to you, or declining a receipt altogether, but there are many laggards in this area.
Forward-thinking organizations should start planning to address this trend, or else lawmakers might act for them – while the initial proposal banning receipts in California failed, you can expect that it’ll be picked up again.
Additionally, organizations that have shortened paper receipts have seen massive business gains – imagine what ending paper receipts could do for the bottom line.
2. Going Green: Paper Receipts Are Not Recyclable
We often think we’re doing the right thing when reusing or recycling paper, but the chemicals in thermal register receipts actually render paper receipts non-recyclable; further, they introduce phenol into the rest of the stream, and the chemicals end up contaminating food and water sources.
So, what do we do? Just as the campaign against single-use plastics caused people to reconsider their consumption, it may be up to us, as consumers, to let companies know that it’s time to make a change. We don’t have to let mountain of receipts become a forgotten environmental problem.
3. Putting an End to Dangerous BPA/BPS Exposure
Believe it or not, phenols like BPA (currently banned in infant/toddler products) are still used in the printing process of receipts.
As noted above, most thermal cash register receipts are printed with a heated combination of BPA and/or BPS, which are known hormone disruptors linked to a number of health issues. Some companies (Apple, Best Buy, Trader Joe’s, Costco, Whole Foods Market) offer phenol-free receipts, but are definitely in the minority.
With so many great options for creating dynamic digital receipts, and the ability to use card readers with paperless transaction capabilities, making the switch to phenol-free paper for the instances in which a customer needs a receipt are totally feasible.
With all of this in mind, the question then becomes: What will it take for to get mass retailers to get on board with eliminating harmful chemicals from their stores, and by proxy, our homes? Again, the answer is most likely the power of the wallet – if consumers opt not to spend money at businesses that don’t adapt, change will be driven much more quickly.
4. Improving Customer Service and CX
Ditching thermal paper receipts doesn’t just benefit consumers. It also provides businesses with a unique opportunity to improve and personalize the customer journey by showing shoppers that they remember them and value their loyalty.
Keep in mind that over 80% of consumers are willing to share their data to enable a personalized experience, thereby providing organizations the crucial insights necessary to provide an outstanding customer experience.
How Top Companies are Digitizing Receipts while Saving Time and Money
As corporations are beginning to take the lead more frequently on social issues, they’re often discovering that there are tremendous business benefits to those initiatives. One of the least favorite tasks that employees deal with is expense reports – but what if those reports could nearly write themselves while also reducing paper receipts?
Sound good? Thought so!
Here’s a few examples of how organizations are using the digitization of receipts for better environmental and business outcomes:
- Employees can snap photos of receipts, then using AI, expenses are populated into their expense report (note we would encourage employees to request a digital receipt when possible)
- Integrations with hotel partners and vendors allow e-receipts to automatically import and populate expenses
- Corporate card integrations allow digital receipts and expenses to flow directly into expense reports
In an emerging value-based economy, retailers who choose to convert to digital receipts could find themselves at a real advantage because there’s good news to spread: they care about their consumers’ health and the environment.
What better way to show it than by eliminating paper receipts?