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California Lawmaker Wants to Ban Paper Receipts, Require Digital Ones (cnbc.com)
A California assemblyman has introduced a law barring retailers from printing paper receipts unless a customer requests one. Otherwise they'd be required to provide proof-or-purchase receipts "only in electronic form."
: An anonymous reader quotes CNBC: Stores that give out printed receipts without first being asked by the customer could be subject to fines [of $25 per day, up to $300 per year].... Proponents of the bill say the legislation would help reduce waste as well as contaminants in the recycling stream from toxins often used to coat the paper-based receipts... Up to 10 million trees and 21 billion gallons of water are used annually in the U.S. to create receipts, according to Green America, a green ecology organization. It said receipts annually generate 686 million pounds of waste and 12 billion pounds of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of 1 million cars on the road...
Then again, the use of electronic receipts raises some privacy concerns since retailers usually require an email address for an electronic receipt and companies will then be able to potentially track and collect more data about customers.
If the bill passes, digital receipts would become California's default option on January 1, 2022.
: An anonymous reader quotes CNBC: Stores that give out printed receipts without first being asked by the customer could be subject to fines [of $25 per day, up to $300 per year].... Proponents of the bill say the legislation would help reduce waste as well as contaminants in the recycling stream from toxins often used to coat the paper-based receipts... Up to 10 million trees and 21 billion gallons of water are used annually in the U.S. to create receipts, according to Green America, a green ecology organization. It said receipts annually generate 686 million pounds of waste and 12 billion pounds of carbon dioxide, or the equivalent of 1 million cars on the road...
Then again, the use of electronic receipts raises some privacy concerns since retailers usually require an email address for an electronic receipt and companies will then be able to potentially track and collect more data about customers.
If the bill passes, digital receipts would become California's default option on January 1, 2022.
(1) Paper receipts should be required if the customer asks
(2) Electronic receipts shouldn't require the customer to provide any information other than an email address ("burner" emails are easy to get).
Of course, this is only a proposal -- lots of things get proposed in CA without many of them actually becoming law.
I got a five feet long receipt/coupon today.
You know, the more I hear of stories like this out of California, the more I think Lex Luthor had the right idea in 1978 Superman movie.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
Come tax time, the thermal printed paper ones are just blank.
A lot of stores have employees/guards check receipts as customers exit. How is this going to work if it passes? Will the employee have tablet and somehow receive their checkout information? Will it involve even more tracking? RFIDs on shopping carts?
You can still get a paper receipt if you ask, and you don't actually need a phone to have a receipt emailed to you.
RTFA - paper receipts will still be legal, just not given by default. If you don't have a smartphone but have an e-receipt, you could probably still print it out (with some sort of QR code for authentication) to make a return.
I was just in Florida, which isn't exactly liberal. They gave us paper straws with a drink because the plastic ones are banned by law (not sure if it's statewide or only local/county law). Nothing wrong with offering people a more environmentally friendly alternative by default, especially if the functionality is the same.
I need a receipt and there is no way in H*** you are getting my email.
I found some thermal receipts the other day from 2013 - they're all fine. The new ones disappear in six months.
Somebody told me it's because of a BPA ban, but I'm not sure. I haven't tried eating any of the new ones.
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Did any think of the privacy situation of never been able to buy anything with cash again without a digital recored kept?
Paper receipts ensure your privacy to buy anything you want without getting tracked on another device.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Trees pull CO2 from the air to produce wood. The tree is cut down and the wood is pulped to form paper, which is then used to print the receipt. If the receipt is subsequently thrown away in a landfill, doesn't that remove CO2 from the atmosphere and sequester it underground?
never been able to buy anything with cash again
That's the idea. Cash is on the way out. All purchases will be tracked (now) and approved (in the future). According to your needs (as determined by The State).
Have gnu, will travel.
This isn't rocket science... if you purchase with a credit card, Home Depot ALREADY DOES this.
If you want to return things:
* Give the items you want to return to the clerk.
* Clerk scans the items, and gives back all the stuff you bought at Lowes and forgot where it came from.
* You swipe all the credit cards you might have used to purchase the returned items.
* Home Depot uses the card data to look for receipts associating a purchase of one or more returned items using that card, and automatically credits the price back to the card.
* For everything else, you provide your ID, and they give you a store credit (the ID is needed to limit the ability to brazenly shoplift items and return them later... if you start returning TOO MANY big-ticket items without a receipt, they'll restrict your ability to get receipt-free refunds of cash purchases in the future.
They should be barred from creating that database of customers.
There is zero reason after emailing a receipt for a purchase, for the e-mail to be kept any longer.
I fully support this bill, so long as there is a strict 'No Capture receipt is issued" requirement.
Don't worry, you can just clean all that up using one of those free plastic bags you get at the grocery store.
Ooops, they banned those in CA as well....
Which worked really, really well! With the success of that law, nine other states are currently planning on copying.
As right-wingers love to lecture, nothing is "free", those "free" bags cost money, and since retail is a highly competitive, low margin business, those "free" bags had gotten so cr_ppy as to be almost worthless - requiring multiple bagging to hold anything of any weight, if they would even then.
Now, if you need a bag, and don't want to pay $2 for one of those nice sewn waterproof fabric bags at the checkout counter that are indefinitely reusable, you can buy a disposable plastic bag for a dime. And that bag is so nice, being large and sturdy, that it can be reused indefinitely. Throwing away piles of flimsy one-use bags is a thing of the past.
I would object strenuously if someone proposed going back. It is much better without those "free" bags.
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Paper straws instead of plastic is fine. But when the conversation in a shop goes: "do you want to sign up for our loyalty card"; "No" (I don't need more tracking, thanks); "OK, so what's your email address"; "Sorry? I said no"; "oh, I still need it, its for the receipt"... digital receipts are not about the environment I'm afraid.
My email is dontspam34EA550C@yahoo.com. So easy to create a burner account for receipts and other people who want to spam you.
I generate more paper waste every year from the amount of election and tax materials from the state than from the puny amount of receipts I guess. But this is typical politician fare - they have to do *something* so that during re-election they can say more than just what they voted for against.
This is probably what killed Radio Shack finally. After an exchange like this I dumped the items I wanted to buy on the counter and walked out.
Since a few years here in Québec/Canada, Restaurants are obligated by law to give a paper receipt in hand even if the customer doesn't want it. They need to throw it out themselves if they don't want it. A special section is added to the receipt by the black box of the gouvernement and they don't even compensate for the additional paper and wear and tear of the printer! Inspectors are visiting restaurants and handing out penalties if those laws are not respected... Total Opposite...
Yep. Because we have such a good history with completely electronic systems. Where physical access allows pretty much anyone to do anything.
And no paper trail means that it's just that much easier to cheat.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I fully support this bill, so long as there is a strict 'No Capture receipt is issued" requirement.
So everyone in the checkout line has to re-enter their email address for every purchase? That is silly.
The e-receipts that I receive are automatically tied to either my credit card or my phone. Swipe, tap, done.
MasterCard and Visa want to get in this business. All the systems they have been building over the last few years have had the capacity to include extensive order details in the records sent to them.
No thank you. And don't tell me the law could prohibit using the email address for marketing. When has that ever stopped them?
-- Will program for bandwidth
We said that about the plastic bag ban. Then, they passed it. Now, we have to buy trash bags for my house that use 10x as much plastic, use 10x as much fuel to deliver them to the store, and are basically worse for the environment in almost every other measurable way. And yet still, there's tons of trash blowing around our streets, because what the legislators didn't do is pass a law fining the garbage truck companies for overuse of automation in ways that result in trash littering the streets behind them.
So no, we should not assume that any idea, no matter how bonkers, is beyond the level of bats**t-craziness that the California legislature is capable of exhibiting. We should always assume that any idea proposed by a politician, no matter how absurd, is likely to pass, and use every ounce of our strength to stomp the bad ideas squarely into the ground.
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Hey, moron!
Do you honestly think people are going to type in their email address at the counter every time they want a receipt?! No way!
This is a huge leap toward a totalitarian police state. That's what this is. Cash or card, government will know.
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Paper usually decompose quite well , and most of it return to the atmosphere under the form of CO2, possibly methane both which are not sequestered, it just seep up. But the whole cutting wood, pulping it, producing paper cutting it to rolls, producing ink, delivering that ink/paper, all cost CO2. So this is not carbon neutral, even if your paper was not decomposing.
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When mechanical tills were first introduced, shopworkers would ring up the wrong amounts and pocket the difference. So they introduced a till roll. That didn't stop the fraud until they gave the customer a copy, since then the customer would complain if the receipt showed the wrong amount. (Any benefit to the customer's right to complain was probably incidental).
We're already seeing electronic receipts a lot in the UK. At least I get asked if I want a paper receipt. And email ones make sense for "click and collect" purchases where they already have my email address.