Retail Asia 2018 RA September.October 2018 (Online) | Page 11

NEWS FEATURE
Scrap the paper: E-receipts
save the environment and
make more economic sense
C
reating and distributing paper
receipts requires vast amounts
of natural resources, resulting
in high costs for retailers
and problems for the environment. In
addition, paper receipts are a nuisance
for consumers: they can be overly long,
cluttering purses and pockets, and are
often difficult to recall when necessary.
To make matters worse, repeated
exposure to harmful chemicals within
paper receipts represents a danger to the
retail associates that handle them each
day.
Consumer outcry
A cogent example of consumer outrage
regarding paper receipts is found in
the infamous story of drugstore CVS,
which issues long scrolls of paper for
each in-store transaction in the US.
The uproar began in 2010 on Twitter
(refer to Twitter handles @cvsreceipts
and #cvsreceipts) where CVS customers
began registering their contempt by
uploading photos of ridiculously
lengthy purchase receipts.
The protest hit a tipping point in
May 2016 when Jimmy Kimmel from
the Jimmy Kimmel Live! talk show
called out CVS for its abuse of paper.
Soon after, Helena Foulke — CVS’
president at that time — appeared on
the show to publicly proclaim that
CVS was adopting digital receipts
and committing to reduce the length
of its paper receipts by 25%. Despite
this commitment, in January this year,
Kimmel followed up to discover that
the situation at CVS had not changed.
While the CVS example may be
considered by some as an extreme case,
the outcry demonstrates strong public
sentiment and provides a clear warning
for retailers.
Environmental and health
risks
Huffington Post contributor Will Hines
highlighted the impact of paper receipt
In a move towards smart
retailing, receipts are sometimes
overlooked when it comes
to plans for digitalisation.
Tomas Diaz, CEO, flexReceipts,
makes a case for doing away with
those pesky little scraps of paper
as proofs of purchase.
manufacturing on the environment
when he declared that “over 250 million
gallons of oil, 10 million trees and 1
billion gallons of water are consumed
each year in the creation of receipts in
the US alone, generating 1.5 billion
pounds of waste”. Stepping beyond the
environmental concerns, paper receipts
are also problematic from a public health
perspective.
According to payment processing
provider PayJunction, many print
receipts should not be recycled because
they are printed on “chemically treated
thermal paper”. The coating applied to
this paper often contains BPA (bisphenol
A), a known endocrine system disrupter
that is dangerous to people when
repeatedly exposed. Unlike BPA in
bottles and cans (which is bound within
the products themselves) BPA found in
paper receipts is in a free form that can
easily be absorbed through the skin.
Powerful economics
As if the environmental and public
health implications were not enough,
the economics related to print receipts
are equally concerning. Maxwell Arnold,
analyst and content producer at Global
Blockchain, broke down the receipt costs
for retail brands. He noted that “while
receipts are viewed as a trivial expense
if you’re … doing 100,000 transactions
per day (or 36.5 million transactions per
year), and each transaction costs you a
cent, you’re spending US$365,000 per
year in receipts alone”. Extend those
numbers across the retail industry in
the US and the amount of receipt paper
consumed points to “roughly US$4
billion in thermal paper expenses per
year”, reports software company Celerant
Technology Corp.
Ideal alternative
Although BPA-free paper receipts
succeed as a healthier alternative,
electronic receipts represent an ideal
solution that is not only consumer-
friendly but also environmentally
conscious and economically sound.
Today, up to 75% of customers opt for
digital receipts. E-receipts are convenient
at checkouts and are easily recalled by
the consumer in cases when a proof of
purchase is required.
Beyond these comparative benefits,
digital receipts further enable retail
marketers to capture more and valid
emails. And because email receipts boast
the highest open and click-through rates
of any consumer email (up to 80% open
rates and click-through up to 15%), they
are an ideal vehicle for boosting loyalty
sign-ups, increasing survey responses
and generating bounceback revenue.
For retailers such as shoe and accessories
chain Aldo and specialty apparel retailer
Destination XL Group Inc, adopting
e-receipts has resulted in a six-figure
incremental revenue stream and a return
on investment (ROI) of 320%.
How’s that for a paper alternative? ra
Retail Asia September/October 2018
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