Why you shouldn’t take a paper receipt

They’re the little pieces of paper we pick up when we make a purchase – but it turns out there are really good reasons why we should say no to a printed receipt.

They’re the little scraps of paper we get when we buy stuff, often to be binned immediately afterwards – but the more than 10 billion receipts printed in Australia every year make a surprisingly enormous environmental impact.

Coinciding with Black Friday, which is expected to supplant Boxing Day as Australia’s busiest shopping day, new research by Sydney’s University of Technology shows more than 150,000 trees have to be axed every year to make those little scraps of paper, and 96,000 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide are emitted as a result.

The world-first research, commissioned by digital receipts platform Slyp, was based on the 14 billion transactions conducted in Australia during the 2019-20 financial year, which produced 10.6 billion printed receipts.

The average Australian takes 485 receipts in a year, the researchers found, and of 708 sample receipts analysed in the study – and yes, they got their rulers out – chemists spat out the longest: 34.62 centimetres, on average.

By comparison, receipts from household stores averaged 31.64cms, those from clothing shops were 29.35cms and grocery stores were 28.08cms.

The study also stated that “the health and ecological impacts of thermal paper receipts have been called into question because the paper contained Bisphenol A (BPA) or like substances, which had been found to have an interactive effect on human hormones”.

But the exact chemical composition of some thermal-paper receipts used in Australia was unclear, the UTS research warned. Thermal paper receipts using BPA have been banned in the EU since 2020.

Taking receipts: the effect of those tiny pieces of paper sure add up. Picture: Z-Migr-AllFuturePic

Slyp CEO and founder, Paul Weingarth. Picture: Supplied

Slyp CEO Paul Weingarth said the intention of the research was not to “turn off paper receipts tomorrow” but “creating a more planet-friendly digital alternative”.

But retailers should move away from using BPA thermal paper for their receipts, he said.

Planet Ark advises that thermal paper receipts should not be recycled.

In August France banned the automatic printing of receipts, while many Australian retailers including Woolworths and Chemist Warehouse now offer a digital option and/or check if the shopper really needs one printed.

Mr Weingarth said Slyp’s digital receipts were fully tax compliant, could be used with banking and retail apps, wouldn’t fade over time, and could be stored and managed as the user needed.

Further afield, digital receipts could also be used to prove authenticity if a product was on-sold, he said.

Mr Weingarth said he was inspired to develop a digital platform for receipts while making a purchase several years ago.

“I tapped my watch to make a payment and I still got this really long piece of paper back,” he said. “The cashier recommended I take a photo of the receipt and email it to myself because it was a six-year warranty item I purchased. I though ‘This is crazy, I can tap a watch to make a payment but I get this analog piece of paper that fades’. That was the ‘a-ha’ moment.”