Several environmental standards such as ENERGY STAR© and LEED© emerged in the early 1990's in an effort to encourage less wasteful design practices in the consumer electronics/appliance and building industries, respectively. Fortunately, the ENERGY STAR and LEED standards were broadly adopted, which has led to significant savings in energy and materials used to source, manufacture, transport, use, and recycle these products and reductions in pollution and toxic byproducts. For example, according to the EPA, ENERGY STAR prevented more than 277 million metric tons of greenhouse gas emissions in 2013 alone. The time has come for a similar standard to be developed and adopted to promote sustainable retail packaging.

Delbarton Mothers’ Guild now uses Squareup.com, an automated credit card processing company that allows its customers to receive receipts through email. The DMG saw a more innovative way to do business that was also better for the environment thereby linking customer satisfaction with a greener way to do retail business.

It used to be that a trip to the mailbox was exciting. You never knew when you might receive a postcard or letter from a friend. Unfortunately, with the invention of email, nearly all of the good things that used to arrive in the mailbox have moved online. As a result, all that one finds in the mailbox each afternoon are bills and junk mail...lots and lots of junk mail. 

I want to make you feel guilty. Every time you go to the grocery store and, without a second thought, let the retailer pack your groceries in either plastic or paper bags, I want you to have “bag guilt.” I want you to feel guilty and have a bit of self-consciousness about using all of those bags that are destructive to the environment.

No...I am not making this up. Retail receipts could be toxic.

Surprisingly, the ink used to print paper receipts often contains Bisphenol-A (BPA) an endocrine-disrupting chemical used in plastics. The extent to which this chemical is toxic on receipts is undetermined at this time because most of the studies with BPA have been looking at exposure through ingestion of BPA.

Did you know that most people I surveyed throw away almost all of the condiments that Chinese restaurants regularly put inside each takeout order? Did you know that in this country there are approximately 41,000 orders of Chinese take out made daily? Did you know that you could fill Yankee Stadium with all of the condiments customers throw away in just 5 short years?

As communities across the globe are becoming increasingly "eco-friendly," we have to realize that there is still more work to be done. History has proven time and time again that change often comes from unexpected places.