What is the environmental impact of posting an invoice?
What is the environmental impact of posting an invoice?
Have you ever wondered what the environmental impact of posting an invoice is?
Lots of research has been done on this topic and not surprisingly a myriad of different results have been published.
A Pitney Bowes report estimates a letter sent by mail (which we can consider an invoice) generates on average 20g of CO2 - this figure includes 6 lifecycle stages, these being: the design, the manufacture of paper and envelope, the printing of the letter, delivering the letter, its use, and finally the disposal. Interestingly, some companies put the figure at nearly 100g but we think this is overegging it.
So, if we post 50 invoices, our carbon footprint will be 1 kg of CO2 , this is equivalent to driving 3.3 milesin an average family car or taking a shower for a couple of minutes.
Makes you think!
If you're still posting paper invoices, try using E-Billing or ParetoPost for the environmentally friendly way to send an electronic invoice.
Source: 2008 Pitney Bowes - The Environmental Impact of Mail: A Baseline
