13

My monthly Comcast statement says that I should go paperless and pay my bill online via "Ecobill, the environmentally friendly way to pay your bill each month".

All jokes about Comcast aside, has anyone done studies about the environmental impact from switching to online bill pay?

Improve this question
3
  • 1
    it saves a single person around 3 sheets of paper per bill, ink, electricity to print it and its transport cost (for a few grams)... do the math
    – ratchet freak
    Commented Dec 6, 2013 at 13:26
  • 4
    It seems likely that it is more environmentally friendly, since mailing a payment results in practically identical electronic resource utilization--it just happens after the check is received rather than in lieu of the check.
    – Flimzy
    Commented Dec 6, 2013 at 13:29
  • @ratchetfreak There's an assumption that epayments create no unique costs of their own, offsetting the obvious savings.
    – user11643
    Commented Apr 4, 2020 at 21:38

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
7

According to Quickbooks.com they conducted a study that reported the following results:

"EChecks help reduce the more than 67.4 million gallons of fuel used and 3.6 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions created by transporting paper checks."

It seems that paying online will not only save you money but will help lower green house emissions.

Source:http://quickbooks.intuit.com/facts-about-electronic-checks/

Improve this answer
2
  • 10
    I'm not sure Intuit QuickBooks is the best source to use here; that page seems like it's trying to promote paperless payments so that people then buy QuickBooks to keep track of payments. Certainly there's an incentive for bias. And it doesn't address any potential downsides, such as, say, increased pollution from power plants because people have to get online to view their bills.
    – Pops
    Commented Jul 10, 2014 at 20:39
  • Further, "67.4 million gallons of fuel used and 3.6 million tons of greenhouse gas emissions created by transporting paper checks" needs its own citation, and also doesn't prove there's no unknown paper/gas/energy usage by making epayments. I know this seems obtuse, but you have to blame the question for that.
    – user11643
    Commented Apr 4, 2020 at 21:36

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .