Electronic Bills - what is your carbon footprint?

If you are like me, you have heard it and seen it.  I'm talking about paying bills electronically and receiving bills electronically, instead of paper bills.

My guess is most of you have already switched to paying bills electronically. I did a long time ago.  It's cheaper all around.  Right now my bank isn't able to send a payment electronically to all the companies who get our money, but they can with most of them.

As far as going paperless for statements. That's been a bit harder on me.  Most things I've done this with, but credit cards I haven't been able to yet. I tried to.  Then I forgot to pay it one month.  We have a credit card that doesn't do ebill and that's the one I forgot to pay.  I told myself I would remember the next month. Nope.  I switched back to paper bills.

I've also been receiving some statements for utilities that I either 1) have the bank automatically make a payment every month since it's always the same or 2) use ebill to get my balance via my bank.  I don't know why I haven't bothered to cancel those yet, probably because I didn't think about it.

I'm going to make an effort though!  It's just a waste.

I found this handy calculator at PayItGreen.  It calculates the resources used by receiving paper bills.  You input the number of paper bills and statements you receive each month and the number of paper payments you mail each month.  The handy calculator tells you the carbon footprint for that.

I entered a total of 6 items.  I was astonished to find that with only 6 items each month, that generates to a waste of 2 lb's of paper, 35 pounds of greenhouse gases, and 19 gallons of water.  Yikes!

You can bet I'm going to see what I can do about getting that number down as close to zero as I can. As of right now the only one I can say I'll have to continue to get is the credit card statement, I don't want to be hit with a late fine of $25 because I forgot to pay it.