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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.
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.
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"
Native Californian (San Diegan) here and I agree with you about the tipping point.
There are a whole host of factors going on here. I don't think it's irreversable (the pendulum always swings back), but we're reaching a tipping point of absurdity no doubt. In no particular order, some of the causes might be:
* Silicon Valley tax revenue flooding the state budget, allowing it to undertake expensive projects w/o much thought
* Progressive Millennials sorting themselves out of the rest of the country and wanting to stay in urban areas more than usual
* Gen-X and Boomers moving out or cashing out their homes to retire elsewhere where money lasts longer
* Trump fatigue lowering voter enthusiasm among moderate-conservative Californians outside the central valley
* Trump anger increasing turnout among young progressives, turning the blue parts of CA really, really, really blue
San Diego in particular is experiencing this. Although coastal CA from the Bay to LA has been pretty progressive for a long time, San Diego has traditionally been comparatively pretty moderate. A strong military presence and a very laid back attitude toward life has kept a moderate status quo in effect for a very long time. Compared to the rest of CA cities, crime is low, the pace is relaxed, commerce is good as a tourist town, and we're not directly connected to the urban morass of Greater Los Angeles, being separated from OC by 20 miles of Camp Pendleton and from the rest of the country by deserts, forests, and mountains. Our County Board of Supervisors went through about 15 years were all 5 incumbents kept getting reelected not because of advantage, but because everything was just going pretty well.
That's changed just recently in 2016 and now much more so in 2018. Suddenly the city council is controlled by a veto-proof majority of 6/9 Democrats, and the regional planning council (SANDAG) was re-constituted after an accounting scandal to give the City of San Diego almost veto control over the other cities in the county when it comes to long term transit planning and the like.
The result has been a swath of relatively left-wing movements that have left a lot of longer-term San Diegans slightly bewildered. Banning of styrofoam and straws; a completely laughable goal of having 20% of all commute traffic done by bike by ~2025 (which is insane -- San Diego is incredibly hilly without many flat biking routes) has caused the council to convert car lanes to bike lanes in a "build it and they will come" notion; and a few other notably questionable decisions have ensued.
In contrast to the rest of the state, San Diego still officially has a realistic view on the border situation, but it may just be a matter of time until the council adopts an attitude more in line with the "sanctuary" position. I think *THAT* might be the last straw and cause a push back from the "silent majority" of San Diegans who would prefer the more moderate policies status quo ante, but it'll be hard to tell until then.
What I can say right now is that a lot of California isn't as blue as the noisiest folks, and I'm hoping the tipping point into absurdity results in a reaction among the residents who think the state has gone too far, regardless of their views on the rest of national politics.
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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?
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.
In contrast to the rest of the state, San Diego still officially has a realistic view on the border situation,
What is a realistic view on the border situation?
That Operation Gatekeeper in the '90s was a success, and that barriers/fences/walls/whatever function as a deterrent to illegal crossing, which is not something that should be encouraged.
San Ysidro is the busiest land border crossing in the Western Hemisphere. Any native San Diegan is well aware of border issues surrounding illegal immigration. (I used to attend classes in Otay Mesa, about 1/4 mile from the mostly-commercial crossing there.)
The contrast with the official view of the State of California now ("sanctuary state!" "unlimited resources!" "walls are immoral and don't work") is absolutely stunning. We have a wall now. It works. Whether we should build more is a policy question, but anyone who makes a blanket statement about how horrible or ineffective walls are... does not live in San Diego or is under the age of 25.
This has been part of the kerfuffle between one of the TV stations here (the only non-network affiliate with a local news team) and CNN, which blew up the other day. Criticism or accusations of it being "right wing" miss the point that *all* of the local reporting by TV stations has been a) pretty level-handed, and b) in agreement that borders are A Thing and that having border fencing helps. It's self-evident for those here, but not to the national media that came in when the caravan arrived and San Ysidro was closed briefly.
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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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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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