I’ll be the first to admit: When standing in line to check out at any store and someone busts out the checkbook to write a check, I start to fume.

Not necessarily because they’re harming the environment using the little paper payment, but because it wastes an extra 30 seconds of my day standing in a pointless line. This VISA ad is so right on:

But aside from my snobby distaste for check-writes, it brings up a better point beyond just the speed and convenience of a credit/debit card: you can reduce your envirohuman impact by using one as well!

Consider this: Despite the Check21 legislation (unofficial wikipedia summary here) from a few years back, there’s still a lot of time, money, effort, and energy that goes into the use of paper checks throughout the free market. There’s the use of paper, its transportation to the consumer, the processing and physical handling after use, and finally ending up recycled or in a landfill somewhere around the world.

I personally use a credit card for virtually all purchases I make and barely even use cash, where I can help it. As a result, no person or company has to expend any unneeded energy to physically process my transactions beyond maintaining the servers that handle my information electronically. Considering my incremental use of that server, that’s virtually nothing.

Not only is this a pain for all users involved, but why not just go virtually completely electronic? Use your debit or credit card and stop irritating the people behind you in line and, oh yeah, while you’re at it, go ahead and opt out of your paper statements for an even greater improvement of your envirohuman impact!

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