Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I’m going to take the opportunity on this green-themed holiday to share a couple of green-themed surveys. I mean “going green” as in being good stewards of the earth, not “going green” as in drinking green beer.

The first is about how many trees are saved by switching from paper checks to direct deposit.  According to the PayitGreen Alliance:

If you are paid twice a month and used direct deposit instead of paper checks, you would single-handedly:
- Save one pound of paper.
- Eliminate the release of four gallons of wastewater.
- Eliminate the release of one pound of greenhouse gases (equivalent to: not driving four miles and half a square food of forest preserved for 10 years).
- Save a business $176.55.

If every US worker with access to direct deposit used the service instead of receiving paper checks we’d:
- Save 11,082,971 pounds of paper.
- Avoid the release of 105,709,380 gallons of wastewater.
- Save 4,105,889 gallons of gas.
- Avoid the release of 31,581,675 pounds of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Equivalent to: 112,329,703 miles not driven; 1,345,379 trees planted (and grown for 10 years) and 13,756,978 square feet of forest preserved.

Those are some big numbers.

A new survey by GfK Roper also found that families going green can save money in this economy. For example, 76 percent have bought energy efficient light bulbs and 58 percent have purchased energy saving appliances. Consumers are also considering gas mileage in their next vehicle purchases more than ever before (81 percent up 15 points from 2007).

But some eco-conscious consumers are still willing to pay more for some items, like purchasing paper products made from recycled papers (72 percent), green household cleaning products (64 percent) and environmentally-safe laundry detergent (57 percent).

That said, economic concerns are causing more Americans to focus on saving money over going green. The number surveyed who said the environment is a greater concern than the economy dropped from 69 percent in 2007 to 55 percent in 2008. And I bet that number will decline in ‘09.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 17th, 2009 at 5:25 pm and is filed under economy, research, saving. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.