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Comment by alexfromapex | Hacker News Reader

One way software could help reduce pollution is if receipts go completely digital. I know not all people have easy electronic access but stores could have kiosks or something to access receipts. It’s just absurd grocery stores and places like CVS still print so much useless paper that people instantly throw away.

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As much as I'm annoyed giving out my phone number at retail... I've got to admit, Square's "text me the receipt" thing feels like the future we should have. But it's a little bit odd that it needs an additional channel. Why couldn't the receipt data go through the payment provider, and show up as part of my bank statement? I realize the answer to this question is probably much, much more complicated than it sounds, but are there any real technical hurdles to implementing something like this?

I’ve wondered this same thing for about 20 years. It almost seems a no-brainer for the credit card companies (Citi, Chase, what have you) or Visa, MC, etc., to have started doing this at some point. But alas, here we are printing on dead trees that I then digitally capture and throw away )-:

They won't get any more revenue out of this, so why would they do it? Not saying that they shouldn't, but it seems like a pretty obvious reason, no?

Wal Mart Pay does digital-only receipts.

in my non expert impression from reading a lot on the topic, in the grand scheme of pollution and environmental problems, waste paper ranks very very low on the list of problems we should be worried about.

That said, I always liked the idea of receipts being replaced by QR codes that display on a little LCD screen, and automatically logged into a receipts app.

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