The UK's 11 billion yearly receipts are an environmental nightmare

Cash may be on the way out, but paper receipts aren't going anywhere at the moment. The problem is that they’re neither green nor healthy
Getty Images / St_Aurora72

Where should you discard a till receipt: in the rubbish or the recycle bin? This is not a trick question. The vast majority of receipts are printed on so-called thermal paper, which is simply not recyclable, just like most disposable coffee cups, yogurt pots and other packaging that looks like paper but has to go to landfill.

Every year, UK retailers hand out around 11.2 billion till receipts, which cost at least £32 million to make. Even if you don’t need a receipt, chances are it’ll be printed anyway and goes into the trash. The whole process can be wasteful.

Thermal paper receipts are the shiny ones, which are fairly standard both at supermarkets and smaller stores. The problem: thermal paper is coated with a substance called bisphenol A (BPA), or its lesser known but also harmful substitute BPS; both react to the heat from a printer head to produce the numbers and letters on the paper. If you scratch a receipt and leave a dark mark, it contains BPA and BPS.

BPA and BPS have both been banned from other plastic products, such as sippy cups and water bottles, because they are harmful when ingested in large amounts. Among other things, they can disrupt the hormone balance in the body, causing infertility and other problems. Research suggests that both substances linger in the body for months, which means that mere traces can accumulate and do plenty of harm. They can be absorbed through the skin, so to avoid harmful health effects, you should use gloves when handling BPA and BPS products or at least scrub your hands vigorously. And, of course, thermal paper can’t be recycled.

A study surveying companies in the EU found that at least half of them are using thermal paper. The research is having an impact; some retailers have begun introducing receipts that are BPA and BPS-free, by using recycled paper certified by the Royal Society of Conservation. “Unnecessary paper receipts are both unsustainable and ubiquitous: a lose-lose,” says Mike Childs from Friends of the Earth, an environmental pressure group.

Also, the majority of thermal paper receipts can't be recycled, because they would end up releasing more BPA into the air. Guidance advises consumers to put receipts into the trash, rather than try to recycle them.

While there is not much data for the UK, paper receipts that end up in the bin are thought to generate as much as 1.5 billion pounds of waste per year.

According to the British Retail Consortium, only 22 per cent of transactions take place using cash. But cash or cards, businesses are usually obliged to provide proof of purchase for consumers. The alternative would be opting for a digital receipt, but that makes many customers uncomfortable, because it usually involves giving the store your email address or phone number. So what are the alternatives?

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One option, of course, is to use an app like Apple Pay, Google pay or Samsung Pay on your smartphone to shop – provided it’s in a store that accepts contactless payments and you spend less than £30. One tap, and you get a digital confirmation of your purchase. In all other situations, retailers can use a plug-in solutions such as Flux.

“There’s an appetite to create a paperless shopping experience, but there’s tension when it comes to not impacting the customer experience,” says Veronique Barbossa, a Flux co-founder who like several of her colleagues used to work at digital bank Revolut. Flux is integrated with other apps – of both fintech startups like Monzo and traditional banks like Barclays – and creates an itemised record of a user’s transactions. Some retailers are using Flux in their own apps, which also reward customers with loyalty points and other benefits.

Flux isn't alone. Many other companies are getting in on the e-receipts trend as well, with major retailers like Argos and Urban Outfitters offering customers the opportunity to have a receipt emailed to them at checkout. Startups such as Transaction Tree and Yreceipts also provide digital receipts, partnering with major retailers such as Topshop. And many taxi companies in the US will email you a digital receipt after you pay by card.

Barbossa says that she sees “a massive push, driven by people, for businesses to be more sustainable,” and encourages customers to talk directly to the retailers who are printing millions of receipts every day. “Paper receipts are non-recyclable, consume oil, trees, and water, and they don’t fit into the digital lifestyle that we currently have.”

Are thermal paper receipts the next plastic straw? After all, a popular campaign on a relatively small environmental issue helped to turn the tide against plastic straws. Even though some said that the focus on plastic straws has been narrow, it showed how changing attitudes can dramatically change habits that once were thought to be immutable.

But Flux and other companies on their own won’t rid the world of paper receipts, and Childs says that there need to be all kinds of efforts to tackle them effectively. “The focus needs to be on governments to legislate. What individuals can do off their own bat is a drop in the ocean compared to the scale of the change that’s needed.”

This article was originally published by WIRED UK