Message to my bank: STOP sending tones of papers, i have internet

The amount of mail and paper sent by my bank is totally outrageous. I thought it was specific to my bank, but i recently switched and it the same. I asked a couple of friends. Same thing. They even talked about it on the radio.

I receive on average 6 to 10 letters each month composed each of several pages to which you need to add the paper of the envelop. Raw calculation: 10x3 (pages)x12 = 360 pages a year + envelopes. This is about half a kilo of paper (equivalent of printer paper bucket). HALF A KILO!!!

Just for my bank. You need to add other service providers. But the bank is the world champion in paper consumption.

About 6 months ago i called them: i asked them if there was a possibility to receive less mail. They said no. Most of this mail is useless to me because i have direct access to all my information on the internet, including, stay here, a copy of the paper mail i receive at home. I told them i did not need it and that i wanted them to stop them from sending mail. They said it was not possible.

This means, raw calculations, that banks are wasting potentially 1 million (households)x1.5 (accounts per household)x 0.5 kilos= 750 tones of paper each year. just for private accounts (not mentioning corporations here). Just for Israel. Imagine the same thing replicated abroad (although in France i could chose NOT to receive paper and access only information via the internet)

Here is a stupid, simple suggestion for banks (and other providers): ask your customers if they want to receive paper mail or not. If not, Ask them if they have internet and if in addition they wish to receive an email alert when they have updated information in their online account.

Cost of doing that? close to ZERO (at least marginally, the only one time set up cost is to create a nice reliable certified alert system for email, which is a few 10ks of dollars max). At the time where everybody gets worried about how to dramatically change the way we use nature resources, how about this one!?

Stupid idea #2: instead of sending me 6 mails a month: just concentrate them: send 1 or 2 max. No need to create an email alert system and you ll divide by 3 or 4 the amount of paper used (not mentionning cost of sending over)

Banks Managers: You'll make your customers, the nature and your bottom line happier.

update: someone reacting to my post on twitter mention his bank asked him to pay to have the mail stopped being sent. Totally insane!!!!

update 2: yaacov says that BankHapoalim pays him money (50 Nis) to receive all mail through the internet. Good thing


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