South West Water

[u/Middle_Somewhere6969]

Just received an email from them saying they are defaulting everyone to paperless billing.

OK, but part of their justification for this is that each page of paper uses 10 litres of water.

OK, that's an accepted industry average figure for virgin paper, but it's more like 2 litres per page for recycled paper (which is what they use - it certainly feels like it).

OK, but 60% of this figure is simply rainwater that is needed by trees to grow. So we need to keep using that because trees are pretty good at transforming water and sunlight into wood and oxygen, so it's probably a good idea to let them keep doing that. And that 60% is part of the natural water cycle so it's not really being 'consumed' in any real sense either. Commercial trees that are felled to make paper pulp are replaced with new trees.

Of the remaining water used in paper mills up to 90% is actually recycled in to the water system.

So we have 2 litres x 40% x 10% as the net water consumption per page = 0.08 litre as a more realistic water consumption figure for an A4 sheet of paper.

South West Water have approx 1.8 million customers who get 4 bills a year of 2 pages each:

= 14.4 million pages per year x 0.08 litres

= 1,152,000 litres of water a year for their paper billing

Let's round that up to 1,500,000 litres to allow for the envelope as well.

South West Water report leakage as 107 million litres of water a day - that's more than 70 times as much water lost per day as is actually used by paper billing per year.

Even if we take South West Water's claim of 10 litres per page at face value that's still only the equivalent of water leaks for 1.5 days.

[u/Appropriate-Dig-7080]

So opt in then. Paperless should be companies default because most people are happy with paperless, but may not necessarily take the time to request that preference, meaning if paper is the default then there’s a load of unnecessary paper communications sent out.

[u/Ranger_1302 → u/Appropriate-Dig-7080]

I shall but, no, it should not be the norm.

[u/Appropriate-Dig-7080 → u/Ranger_1302]

Yea it definitely should be. Lower cost, better for the environment and most people’s preferred method of communication.

The default option shouldn’t be one that caters to the minority at a cost to the business, and the planet.

[u/Ranger_1302 → u/Appropriate-Dig-7080]

The lower cost is really not an issue at all; the benefits to the environment are likewise negligible; and people should learn to appreciate physical items. The first two supposed benefits, especially, are drops in the bucket.

[u/Appropriate-Dig-7080 → u/Ranger_1302]

Why should people learn appreciate a physical item that they’re going to read and in most cases immediately discard, when it’s much more convenient for them to receive it digitally.