A household of six goes through a lot of everything, including paper. We have cut down on our household’s consumption of paper waste by paying all of our bills online. We get very little actual postal mail these days compared to many families, for that I am super thankful. I do not subscribe to any catalogs or magazines either, I order what I need online to avoid the bulk.

By switching to electronic bills, statements, and payments, every year the average household can:^1**

• Save 6.6 pounds of paper
• Save 0.079 trees
• Avoid use of 4.5 gallons of gasoline to mail bills, statements, and payments
• Avoid release of 63 gallons of waste water into the environment
• Avoid producing 171 pounds of greenhouse gas emissions

That’s kind of a big deal.

Today, something very insignificant bothered me: A single wasted piece of paper.

I have four children that come home most days with stacks of homework, completed work and corrected papers. This is a necessary evil, it is. But today, my six year old came in with a sheet of paper, that looked very important! I immediately took it to read: “Dear Mrs. So and So...” and after a full paragraph of blah blah blah, I realized this was a BILL for FIVE CENTS.

My first grader was short five cents on her lunch money.

The school lunch program went to the cost of printing out a clean sheet of paper for billing Mrs. Mama for FIVE STINKING CENTS. That INK? That PAPER? It’s got to be worth more than five cents. I can understand the need for a note home or even better in 2008 – an email to Mom & Dad if the child comes to school with no lunch money, or perhaps makes it a constant habit of having no lunch money. But, a stinking nickel? Come on. We can save paper. It’s time. It’s 2008.

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