Woolworths shoppers have made a huge saving by opting out of an outdated tradition at the checkout. And it’s been achieved with a simple change offered on the company’s Everyday Rewards app.
The retail group has given customers who belong to this loyalty program the ability to opt out of printed receipts and have them emailed instead. This simple change had a huge impact — it has saved enough paper to stretch around the Earth 25 times.
“Over 4.5 million shoppers are now opting out of paper receipts, having saved more than one million kilometres of paper across the Woolworths Group since October 2024,” a spokesperson for the grocery giant told Yahoo News.
The savings were made across its Woolworths supermarkets, BWS, and Big W stores.
Why are printed receipts problematic?
Most receipts printed in Australia can’t be recycled because they contain plastic, so they all end up in landfill. Looking internationally, experts have also raised concerns about the chemicals many of them contain, saying more research is needed into their impact on human health.
The equivalent of 150,000 trees are logged every year to provide Australians with receipts. Source: Getty (File image)
(UCG/Universal Images Group via G)
A 2023 study by the University of Technology Sydney estimated that more than 10.6 billion receipts were printed across Australia every year, sourced from around 150,000 trees, and creating 96,000 metric tonnes of carbon emissions.
If all retailers around Australia switched to digital options, around 1,562,000,000 litres of water could also be saved.
Woolworths explained that the change to digital receipts is made via its Rewards app, but that customers can still request a paper receipt if they need one.
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