Encourage the switch to paperless receipts

I imagine most people have had the experience of begrudgingly taking receipts they didn't want and would later be mildly inconvenienced by, just to avoid the potential slight awkwardness of telling the cashier that said receipts were unwanted. If someone's offering you something, after all, it can feel churlish to reject it. But switching from traditional receipts to email or cellphone versions saves businesses money in addition to avoiding paper waste. It may come with privacy concerns, but there are also the advantages to consumers of easy-to-ditigize financial records and, trivial as it is, less cluttered wallets and pockets. 


Whether you personally opt for paperless receipts or not, it's sensible for businesses to offer the choice. And all it takes to encourage businesses to do so is to make the suggestion in a letter, email, phone call or brief conversation with staff in a shop. It's not going to singlehandedly save the Amazon, of course, but any effort to reduce a culture of waste is worthwhile. The unprepared poets of the future will just to have to use their own skin when inspiration strikes.


Effort involved: a few sentences.


Image from: http://www.toothpastefordinner.com/archives/2003/Jan/