PayItGreen celebrates Earth Day with a harsh reality.
A new survey examines who’s helping save the planet by going paperless with statements, bills and payments–and who’s not.
5,000 consumers were surveyed to find out how many are using electronic payments, electronic statements and electronic bills. Eric Leiserson is a member of PayItGreen.org and will be available to discuss the data and its findings.
Every year, paper checks use over 600 million gallons of fuel and add over 3 million tons of CO2 to the environment. But over the last ten years, businesses saved a total of $6.7 billion by switching to paperless statements and payments, an average annual savings of $176.55 per employee.
If 20 percent of households (22,876,800 households) were to switch to electronic bills, statements, and payments, every year the collective impact would:
Save over 150 million pounds of paper
Save 1.8 million trees
Avoid creating over a billion gallons of wastewater
Save almost 103 million gallons of gasoline to mail bills, statements and payments
Avoid producing 3,920,802,916 pounds (1,960,402 tons) of greenhouse gas emissions
If a business that employs 300 people and issues paychecks every two weeks switched to direct deposit, in one year, it would:
Save 121 pounds of paper;
Avoid the release of 1,159 gallons of wastewater into the environment;
Save 45 gallons of gas;
Avoid the release of 346 pounds of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
Eric Leiserson (LIE-sir-son) is a member of PayItGreen.org and is a Senior Research Analyst at Fiserv, a fortune 500 financial services technology company.In this role, Leisersons responsibilities include the development of consumer related electronic billing and payment research, adoption strategies and marketing programs for its Biller Solutions Division. He has authored several white papers and case studies on consumer behavior and attitudes with respect to banking, billing and payment practices. He has conducted numerous primary research projects and webinars in the areas of green marketing, consumer segmentation, longitudinal surveys, web usability and focus groups. Leiserson was a charter member of the PayItGreen Alliance and was an active member of its Business Toolkit Workgroup. Prior to joining Fiserv in 2004, Leiserson held marketing and sales positions at Unisys Corporation and Intuit. Leiserson holds a Bachelors degree from University of New York, Oswego NY and his MBA from GA State University, Atlanta GA.
