Mike,

Canada. A few days ago I purchased some lumber at my local Home depot.
On the Credit card machine a question came up before allowing me to
proceed. It asked "Would you like your receipt emailed to you? Y/N"
My God! Is the next thing the same way the phoney grocery bag scam has
gone? Are we going to have to pay for a printed store receipt if we
don't want to give out our spammail address?
After all it's all in the name of green planet hype, isn't it? That
paper receipt will kill millions of omeba in the twilight zone that
protects earth.

I'm all for reducing environmental impact, but always choose the paper
receipt. I don't want to type in my email address at the store, or
receive a bunch of junk mail later.

If they insist on going digital, I would rather carry a USB flash drive
with me and let them save a PDF version of the receipt to that. They save
paper, I get a digital copy, and no junk mail. If enough places did it,
it would be no different than carrying around a wallet full of credit and
debit cards.

As for the paper receipts, I have three Home Depot receipts in front of
me right now. The store name/address and my list of purchases are 4" to
6" long on each receipt. The remaining 6" to 8" is about store policies,
information on home pickups, chances to win gift cards, surveys, and an
advertisement for redbeacon. They could cut their paper usage by 1/2 to
2/3 by replacing all that extra junk with a simple one or two line web
link for more information.

Most stores are guilty of excessive paper use. My recent Safeway grocery
receipt has an extra 6" at the bottom telling me my accumulations for
sandwich credits, surveys, back to school items, gas rewards, etc.
Wasteful.

Heck, bank and bill statements are excessively wasteful too. Very
inefficient layouts, often taking three pages for information that would
easily have fit on one. Or the one I love, "this page is intentionally
left blank". If you can print that line on there, why not print my
account information there instead and save some paper?

I have gone digital for most bank and bill statements that offer it. Less
waste, and it's less work for me to download the statement and archive it
than it is to scan in the paper statements. But I don't care for the
emailed store receipts.

Anthony Watson
WatsonDIY.com/anthony.htm