I do most of my bill paying online, mostly because I hate having to rig up my ancient shredder when the credit card bills come (although sometimes I figure rolling it up in a dirty diaper is just as good a id-theft stopper– if you want my money and my life that badly, go for it).

But a new study from the Electronic Payments Association, an organization that admittedly has a vested interest in getting people to chuck paper statements, found that doing so can save trees.

Obvious? Yes. But did you know…

Every year Americans mail 26 billion bills and statements and 9 billion payments in paper form. The production and transportation of those paper bills, statements, and payments consumes the following resources:

· 755 million pounds of paper

· 9 million trees

· 512 million gallons of gasoline

You can calculate your own Financial Paper Footprint.

And check out additional resources at PayItGreen.org.

A poll by Creditcards.com found just 22 percent of participants opt out of receiving credit card bills in the mail. I’m not surprised. It’s called inertia.

How about you? If not paperless statements, what have you done to jump on the going green hay ride? And are you noticing a financial benefit?

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 3:17 pm and is filed under credit. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.