Fed-up of all those bills coming through your letterbox? I was, so I decided to do something about it – I stopped them! Unfortunately, I wasn’t able stop paying them (I wish!) but was able to stop the mountain of paper I got every month.
So how do you stop your bills? Easy, go paper-free! Paper-free, or paperless, billing is easy to set up and the benefits to you, and the environment, are huge:
- Less paperwork to deal with
- Less documents to dispose of
- Less risk of identity theft
- Less resources consumed
- Less energy used
- Less CO2 produced
- Less trees cut down
- Less waste to landfill
If everyone in the UK went paper-free tomorrow, we’d save XX* million tonnes of CO2 from going in to the atmosphere and XX* million trees from being cut down. And save a whole pile of money in the process!
XX* I don’t know how much it would save (alot, obviously) and hope someone can enlighten me with the figures, for the benefit of all our readers. The info might be on the web or maybe an environmentalist, academic or student will know. Please leave a comment if you do!
Go paper-free
Most banks, telecom and utility companies, local and national authorities, now offer paper-free or paperless billing. Check out their websites or contact them to find out how you can do it.
Obviously you need internet access when you go paper-free, so that you can get and pay your bills electronically by email and on the web.
If your bank, telecom, utility company or local authority doesn’t offer paperless billing, ask them why – and tell them why you’d like to do it.
Stop junk mail too
You might have reasons for wanting paper bills, and not go paperless. But I doubt you want the sackfuls of junk mail that comes through your letterbox.
You can stop that too – or at least reduce it considerably – by registering with the Mailing Preference Service if you’re in the UK.
Do Not Mail are campaigning for a similar registry in the US and the CMA provide an opt-out service in Canada.
You can also return any unwanted mail to the sender with a notice on the envelope asking them to remove your details from their mailing-list. It usually does the trick!
Save! Save! Save!
Think of all the paperwork, hassle, resources, energy, waste, trees and money we’ll save when we all switch to paper-free billing and stop the junk mail. Remember, if you know exactly (or approximately) how much we’ll save, please let us know.
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8 comments… read them below or add yours now
Yeah, do it! Who wants a heap of bills in the post? We’d probably need a few less power stations too, if we all went paper and junk-mail free!!
Thanks Sam. Good point about the power-stations ;-)
I’m in full agreement. I’ve been paperless for all my incoming bills and newspapers (yes, you can view actual full pages of newspapers online) for years. Not only does it help the environment – it helps me! It’s a million times easier to find a bill, say, for this time last year, when it’s in a folder on my PC desktop than when it’s stuffed away in a drawer somewhere. A paperless future? I’m all for that!
Thanks Badger. Great tip about newspapers too. Likewise, I don’t get paper-based news (or magazines) – when all the news I want is available online. Another few tonnes of CO2 and a few hundred trees saved each year. Going paper-free really is great news for the environment!
Paul, thanks for the comment on MuseGreen and also the referral back to your site – this is great. I’m going to take you up on your offer of spreading the content so that we can attack both sides of the pond and drive home that we need to deal with it on a global scale.
Best,
Lorraine
Thanks Lorraine ;-) Nice to connect with other independent green blogs. Yeah, we need action on a global scale, for the sake of the environment. The mail/post companies don’t like it though – after all, paper bills and junk-mail are their bread & butter!
This is a very helpful article. Since reading it yesterday I’ve signed up for paperless billing with my mobile, phone and energy suppliers. I also registered with MPS to stop the junk-mail. I hadn’t heard of that before.
I stopped my bills a few years ago and did the MPS thing. I hardly get any mail now which is good for me and the environment! Oh, and another thing you should always do is make sure you tick boxes on forms you fill in that say you DON’T want any offers or your details passed onto third parties – always look out for that, it’s usually in the teeny-weeny smallprint at the bottom!!