Each year, the fight to save the environment and reduce our carbon footprint becomes more prevalent. Now, more than ever, the energy industry is focusing on sustainability and reducing environmental impact within their organizations. Making changes to conserve the planet’s natural resources and reduce the pollution associated with unsustainable energy is an important step for all energy organizations’ overall processes and can begin with their payment methods.
According to a recent study, 62% of consumers polled say it’s now more important than before that companies behave in a more sustainable and eco-friendly way. So how can an energy leader begin to reduce their overall carbon footprint when it comes to payments, you ask?
Within this article, we will touch upon what a carbon footprint is, and how your energy organization can reduce its carbon footprint by making just a few simple (and organizationally beneficial!) changes to everyday payment and refund processes.
What is a carbon footprint?
Nature.org describes a carbon footprint as the total amount of greenhouse gases that are generated by everyday human actions.
Stop for a moment and think about the number of paper check payments your company sends out in any given month. The usage of paper checks to send credit balance refunds, dividends payouts, and other corporate payments to consumers can drastically increase your organization’s carbon footprint.
As an energy leader, offering more sustainable, digital options when it comes to consumer payments and refunds can be an easy first step in the right direction.
Did you know that nearly 68 million trees are cut down each year to produce paper and paper products? If the paper is not recycled, it ends up in landfills1.
The Carbon Footprint of Traditional Refund and Payment Methods
As we have learned, the antiquated payment method of a paper check is not only costly to your organization and ripe for fraud, but it impacts the environment.
Creating paper checks, paper envelopes, and any paper documents that go along with those checks, demands resources like trees, water, and gas. The process ends up emitting greenhouse gases into the environment.
Furthermore, once a paper check is processed, it typically ends up in a trash can and then in a landfill alongside the other papers sent and the envelope it may have come in, adding to waste accumulation.
According to The World Counts, paper accounts for around 26% of total waste at landfills2.
Your energy organization has likely already gone “paperless” when it comes to sending customer bills, but still uses paper and paper checks when it comes to recurring processes such as payments and refunds – making your “paperless” efforts much less impactful.
Advantages of Digital Refunds and Payments
When your energy organization decides to ditch the paper check in order to reduce your carbon footprint, you also reap some other major benefits:
Cost Savings – paper costs, check printing costs, postage due…
Administrative Alleviation – save time, no longer deal with escheatment management, increased accuracy
Customer Satisfaction – delivering consumer payments and refunds owed, near-instantly
Security – reduce paper check fraud risk, send secure and compliant digital payments near-instantly
Overall, as a leader within an energy organization, if you are looking to reduce your company’s carbon footprint compliantly, quickly, and seamlessly by switching to digital payments and refunds, Dash Solutions can help.
Reduce Your Energy Organization’s Carbon Footprint Today
2 https://www.theworldcounts.com/stories/paper-waste-facts