Why do I shop at Wal-mart? Well because I am poor and Wal-mart is the best deal around.
Exhibit A: My receipt (my only exhibit)
This receipt is 16" long. I only bought 8 items, and believe it or not, this receipt is on the short side! Along with letting me know "We value your opinion" and giving me the opportunity to go online and complete a survey for the chance to win a $1000 shopping card, it also cautions that I must be 18 years or older to participate in the survey (totally unfair, if someone under 18 buys something at Wal-mart shouldn't they get the same opportunities as all of the customers 18 years or older?), as well as tells me that they carry "All you need for back to school, At our best-in-class prices". Oh, it also tells me in giant bold letters that I bought 8 items, in case I couldn't count. Only about 4 inches of this receipt contains information that I ever need to know again, and even then, most likely, probably never.
This waste of paper and marginally useless information has obviously bothered me for a while, so I did a little calculation. Wal-mart serves an average 138 million customers world wide per week. If every customer averages 8 items and a 16" receipt that is 2,208 million inches of paper. That translates into 34,848 miles of receipt paper per week. What does that mean? Well I am no math genius so my calculations are rough, but I figure that it is approximately 19,000 miles say from Denver, all the way around the world, and back to Denver. That means there is enough receipt paper put out by Wal-mart every week to wrap around the world almost twice! Nearly 100 times a year, and that doesn't account for the holidays. I confess I don't live as green as I could or should, but doesn't that translate into a lot of trees?
Wal-mart isn't the only offender, and call me crazy, but give us the option to not print a receipt, or at least cut out all of the useless information that my bet is no one every reads. And to the guy who does, he must be winning a lot of free shopping cards. Wish I were him.
4 witticisms:
Rose, you should do more research on how to stop this monstrosity. Good work anyway. Love the post
It's almost as bad as those coupons grocery stores print for you with your receipt that are for like $.40 off a bag of dog food. Did you even buy dog food? No. Do you even own a dog? Nope. But there you have it, a big long string of $.40 off coupons for puppy chow.
I have a great idea!! You know how some places are starting to charge customers to use their plastic bags? We should start charging the stores to give us those receipts.
its all about marketing...the longer the receipt it appears to be more of a value to the customer for what they spent...
imagine spending $250 and having a small receipt...you'd feel like what you bought was really expensive stuff....
But if you spent $50 and your receipt was large enough to fold over 4 times you'd feel like you just bought the entire store for $50...
wal-mart and everyone else out there making quite a bit of money use little things like extra paper to lure you back...and make you feel all happy inside...
it would be nice to see smaller amounts of paper used though but it probably won't happen anytime soon...
did you know the breath strips you put in your mouth and they dissolve...thats plastic...ya i just found that out...
you know the more i learn about healthy living the more i wish i would have learned from your parents early on...they seemed on top of the whole healthy living...
I get a big fat receipt like that all the time! I used to go do the survey until I was constantly (at least 2 times a week) being told I WON the shopping spree if only I would do something else. Annoying!
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