The digital age has afforded us many things including the ability to limit our envirohuman impact. Today, we look at one of the easiest ways to reduce your consumption (and a company’s production/use) of paper.

Every month, you probably receive 2-3 small novels in the mail taking the form of various statements, whether for a credit card, bank, or cell phone monthly usage statement. These can vary from 2 to 30 pages long and oftentimes, many people don’t even bother looking at them in the first place.

Well, if you didn’t already know, most of these companies provide you the opportunity to “opt out” of the paper version of your statement in favor of just viewing a PDF or web page version of the statement. Now, if at some point you’d like to have a paper copy of a statement, a magnificent invention from over 25 years ago can help solve that: it’s called a printer.

While your computer will be using electricity for you to view the statement online, it’s probably not using nearly the energy of the following process: cutting down a tree, transporting it to a mill, turning it into paper (using large amounts of water and often, chlorine), shipping it to a company, printing the page(s), using an envelope, mailing them to you, potentially shredding them, throwing them away, and ending up in a landfill somewhere (or hopefully recycling, although that also is energy intensive).

Wouldn’t it be nice to just replace that entire process with a simple click of the mouse? Opt out of your paper statements today!

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