Is the consumption of thermal paper at checkout by point-of-sale receipt printers the next goal for Greentailers in their bid for carbon neutrality?
Thermal receipt printers in retail stores consume hundreds of thousands of rolls of thermal paper daily. They do this while doing their job of printing receipts that are invariably discarded within an hour of leaving the store. Retailers mindful of the mood of environmentally conscious consumers are constantly looking for ways to reduce their carbon footprint, and paper consumption at the point of sale could well be an attractive area to focus on. Especially since any savings in paper consumption would not only help the environment but also help reduce store costs.
In this article we are quantifying the amount of thermal paper that a typical 700-store retail chain would use in a day and a year, and the impact that rationalizing paper use could have on an organization’s carbon footprint.
I selected 700 stores as the base because in the market I’m looking at, Australia, there are two major players in the supermarket arena, each with more than 700 stores in operation.
In a typical supermarket in Australia at a point of sale, the checkout line will consume an average of 3.5 rolls of thermal paper per day. The weight of a roll of thermal paper includes 333 grams of actual paper. An average supermarket will have at least 10 checkout lines.
Doing the basic math, the case for saving paper becomes compelling:
- 700 retail stores x 10 lanes per store = 7,000 checkout lanes for that retail chain
- 7,000 rows of boxes x 3.5 rolls of thermal paper per day = 24,500 rolls of paper/day.
- 24,500 rolls of paper x 333 grams/roll = 8,158,500 grams in total, which is equivalent to 8.1585 tons of paper per day.
This sounds like a lot of paper, and yes it is! Approximately 22 trees are required to make a single ton of thermal paper. So, in our 700-store scenario above, where the retail chain consumes on average more than 8 tons of paper each day of operation, this equates to:
8.1585 tons of paper per day x 22 trees per ton = 179 trees per day
Most supermarkets are in business for at least 360 days of any given year and this daily consumption of trees really skyrockets when these figures are extrapolated, because the number of trees consumed annually suddenly jumps to:
179 trees consumed per day x 360 operational days = 64,440 trees per year!
If a green business could reduce its paper consumption by 50%, it would be saving 32,000 trees each year, 320,000 trees in a decade.
Multiply this number by the number of retail chains out there and we’re talking literally millions of mature trees that, to date, are proving to be the best carbon-sucking device available on the planet.
Can environmentalists make a difference by reducing paper consumption?
Of course they can: a new generation of post-ecological printer technology, or eco-printers, is available that can achieve 50% paper savings. The question now is whether greentailers have the desire to go ahead.