France to end non-essential printing of paper receipts

Meanwhile in Germany: https://paymentandbanking.com/en/tag/bonpflicht-en/

Since January 1, 2020, the receipt requirement has been in force in Germany, and retailers and restaurateurs must issue a receipt for every transaction.

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Well, it's not mandatory to print a receipt in Germany. Only the purchase itself needs to be recorded and the receipt can be issued in a digital form as well. It's up to the retailers how they want to implement this.

Let's take the two local bakeries in my neighborhood as an example. One still issues paper receipts and complains since three years about this law with witty share pics that he has to raise prices because of all the paper he needs to buy and that the government does not trust family businesses. And the other one simply provides a QR code on the cash registry's screen which I can scan within 60 seconds to download the receipt (if I want to) or he prints one if asked to do so.

In fact, I do not see big differences to the situation in France.

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That works to combat tax fraud though. Cash payment is incredibly popular in Germany, partly because many stores or restaurants outright refuse card payments to avoid paying taxes.

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- Wait… are you saying some Germans doesn’t respect the law? Is it possible for a German?
  
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- That works to combat tax fraud though
  
  If there only was a way to do something like this electronically...
  
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- A German here. Believe it or not - we have a long standing problem with organized crime feeling at home here (think "you don't shit where you eat"). They mostly don't do crime in germany, but rather clean their money under the radar. It's not uncommon for, say, a pizza delivery service and several sports betting shops to close in parallel, only to reopen under the same name a few months later. These businesses prefer cash for a reason.
  
  The ones who suffer are the small German retailers such as bakeries, butchers, kiosks, etc.. where a large number of very small amounts are traded every day. The percentage shares for card payment either reduce profits or increase prices. Great...
  
  All this is more or less public knowledge, but not a public discussion, probably because of corruption. Sometimes you hear about journalists being imprisoned for no good reason. A fairly recent one was simply declared "insane" and put in jail for years after publishing an article about strange payments from a group of politicians. Turns out he was right, much later, when it was all too late.
  
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- How is that supposed to combat tax fraud? Nobody keeps their receipts, and in the end if im not offered one when i dont want one, im not gonna ask for it
  
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Meanwhile, French elites take their private jets to celebrate the success by vacationing (totally not off-setting the carbon savings)

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And the right/alt right tries to defend it saying it creates jobs

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Not sure if there's a scheme in place here in Scotland or UK, but I always get asked if I want a receipt or not for several years now. Receipts and plastic bags are only by request. The main exceptions seem to be restaurants and public transport.

However, my local supermarket has installed receipt scanning barriers at the self checkout - so those used to have optional receipts, but no longer. I guess profits before environment.

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Often in the US you'll be asked if you want a receipt, but saying no will frequently have the receipt printed anyway but they just throw it away. It's pretty stupid.

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In France in my local supermarket, since several days, we can print only a small receipt just for the scanning barriers if we want. This is still some waste though.

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We have them at self checkouts here in Norway. Can't get out of the store without them. I do not like it

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- In the Netherlands the terminals ask if you want a full receipt or a short one with just the barcode to exit.
  
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- In the Netherlands the terminals ask if you want a full receipt or a short one with just the barcode to exit.
  
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- In the Netherlands the terminals ask if you want a full receipt or a short one with just the barcode to exit.
  
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- In the Netherlands the terminals ask if you want a full receipt or a short one with just the barcode to exit.
  
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I have mixed feelings about this. On one hand receipts are probably nothing in the scale of pollution in general. On the other hand the paper receipts are printed on is non-recyclable whatsoever (due to the wax layer), so it can only end up in a landfill or burned. However forcing service providers and sellers to issue receipts ensures they pay tax on the goods and services sold. Perhaps secret shopper type of control by the tax bureau would make them do that anyway. Don't know what to think

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In Sweden there are digital mailboxes that are considered just as bound to you as physical mail boxes (normal email is considered too flimsy for official mail etc).

If you have such a mailbox a lot of stores will send the receipt digitally instead of printing it at the POS. Although it only works if they know who you are (i.e you basically have to have a membership with the store).

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- Kivra and such are privately owned, and it seems foolish to trust them with all your data. One should use Min Myndighetspost as a digital mailbox for government-mails, and encourage places to have alternative options (Hemköp and Willys lets you see your receipts on their own websites for example)
  
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The paper commonly used for receipts is thermal paper, which doesn't usually have any wax in it. But it's still not recyclable due to the other chemicals in it.

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- True. Some shops (only Lidl where I live so far) switched to blue receipts, which apparently can be recycled with paper
  
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It's pretty simple, modify the electronic payments circuits to have them transmit virtual receipts, and continue using paper for receipts of cash payments

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Dew to total control in Russia we have our receipets on e-mail 🤷‍♂️ 🙈

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Fossil Fuels, Manufacturing and Agriculture are the largest polluters in the world, they always have been, this is not a mystery, so when governments take enforcement of green friendly policies down to the consumer level, they are play acting at doing something, all whilst their political constituents and contributors continue to keep doing the same fucking things. Year after year, decade after decade, but sure tell me again how home gas stoves, and plastic straws are gonna save the planet while shell, ford and monsanto keep pumping florocarbons into the atmosphere. We have the technology to go completely green at the industrial level, it's just "the wrong people" would be getting paid for energy instead of the villains which always have been.

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My understanding of the push on gas stoves is more health reasons, such as the increased link to asthma in children.

Even as someone with a gas stove, I don't really see an issue with that. Things get restricted and banned for health & safety all the time. When I was growing up, cigarettes were everywhere and now you barely see them. Seems a weird hill to die on.

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If they wanted to reduce the amount of useless receipts to curb consumption, just put a tax on receipt paper at the point of manufacturing. Increase the price there, and the market will automatically use less of it. And the tax can then be used to mitigate the effects of what receipt paper is produced.

It's far, far easier to regulate a dozen (or fewer) paper companies than it is to regulate millions of retail points of sale. The same goes for plastic: If the price of a gram of plastic included mitigating the effects of producing it, the price would be higher and therefore there would be less of it. And that which exists will be less likely to be wasted.

Externalities are one place where free market theory breaks down and needs regulation. Taxing at the source puts a price on this externality as soon as it enters the market, so the market can adapt to it.

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Weird, stores in Canada just ask whether you want a receipt printed and skip it if you don't want one.

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There was a change a few years ago here in Germany where they made them compulsory for some reason related to preventing tax fraud. Not sure if other countries did something similar.

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- Sweden has kinda like that, they can still ask you but if you're buying a cheap pizza, pay cash and if they don't ask you can be pretty sure it's tax fraud. I sometimes ask for a receipt in these places and the cashier will look mighty upset when he enter the transaction into the register.
  
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Half the machines print one by default that goes straight in the trash and then prints a second if you want your copy

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Sometimes I really question the real motives of the environemtalists pushing for such petty changes. just make them biodegradable. especialy for things like groceries where there isn't a big expectation for returns.

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While I agree that we should focus heavily on the big stuff I really don't understand why people get so upset about this. Everything little thing helps and if people just said "yes of course we should stop that" and moved on to the nex thing, we could get so much further. It's just such a low hanging fruit to ban stupid receipts that are generally not wanted.

Other low hanging fruit examples: single use plastic bags, single use plastic plates and cups, unnesseary packaging for products, non biodegradable packaging, unnesseary lights in stores that are closed, the smallest coin size like the 1-50 cent etc etc etc. Literally everything helps so don't get upset.

If you can't handle the small changes how the hell do you handle the bigger changes that are to come.

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- More important low hanging fruit:
  
  Private jets
  
  Multiple vehicles
  
  Multiple homes
  
  Why are people always so small minded about this? Have you not considered how immensely more polluting a car or a house is than a plastic bag? Have you not considered the people affected: a few of the richest vs millions of average people?
  
  Think big. Think rich. Those are the changes we need.
  
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- While I agree that we should focus heavily on the big stuff I really don’t understand why people get so upset about this.
  
  Because there are side-effects. Receipts are an important tool against tax evasion. I.e. I would be very surprised if this change doesn't cost magnitudes more in lost revenue than in prevented environmental damage. If the benefits are small even a small cost can make your measure a bad idea.
  
  Edit: Not exactly scientific but: I can find thermal paper that can be recycled as paper for about €0.07 per meter on amazon.de. I.e. a single environmentally friendly receipt costs about a cent. As a reference: Tax evasion in this area is around 10 billion euros per year in Germany alone.
  
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- For me I believe that making everything rely on technology and going digital is a bad thing, As much as I hate paper and bureaucracy. I am still attached to the idea that people should be allowed to function in a society by just using pen and paper, and plastic bags :-ç , requiring people to subscribe to a vicious cycle of contiounously outdating and outpaced costly technology every 5 years is more harmful to the environment than pen and paper.
  
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Petty changes still matters in the big picture. Even if they were made biodegradable, there would still be emissions involved in the production of them. Also this is definitely the future anyway, since payment methods are switching to digital either way.

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Reading the article, it's just aimed at pointless receipts. Think paying cash for a loaf of bread and a pint of milk. You don't need paper for that. Update POS software to ask before printing.

Also, it's mostly thermal paper these days. I don't even think you can make that biodegradable and if you can there's plenty of chemicals in there you probably don't want releasing into nature. At this point it's easier to just get rid of them than to replace them with dot matrix printers again.

Email is the wrong solution as well. Nobody wants to fuck about at the till going "danny dot f underscore 32 at yahoo dot mail dot org". No operator wants to have to type that in. Half the time they'd type it wrong. I don't want them to even have my email address, because I know they'll spam the fuck out of it. I'd rather they just send a bunch of sale metadata to my credit card provider or something, so the proof of sale could be on there.

I just don't take a receipt unless it's for something that might need to go back. Equally pointless are the shops that ask if you need a receipt, but they've already printed it anyway so they just chuck it in a bin behind them.

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- Over here there are some supermarkets that offer digital receipts via qr code. It's really not that hard tbh. Although I usually tap on "digital receipt" and then just don't scan it so they don't print one.
  
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Knowing the French fondness for all things paperwork, there will be quite a lot 'essential'

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French fondness for all things paperwork

Another piece of evidence that French and Germans are siblings after all.

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Well, here in Italy most places don't give you a receipt at all. For the wrong reasons (tax evasion) but at least we don't waste paper, right? Right?

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That is an exaggeration

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Everyone doesn't have a mobile phone. Even if they do, probably not with an internet connection. You are creating a central point of failure

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Hooray! Now let's do it across Europe

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Some places already have implemented digital payment to such an extent that it has occurred naturally.

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Nukular iS fReNChs contribution to stop climate change LOL

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