
In the past year, Bank of America set out to follow a scientific procedure and also find independent inspection of a life cycle assessment study to figure out the relative carbon emissions and water intake impacts of electronic statements as compare to paper statements. The outcomes of this research directed them to inform customers that for people focused on minimizing their carbon footprint and water intake, these clients can opt to get statements in electronic form.
Bank of America nations from the report's Executive Summary acknowledge that the relative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and water effects from paper versus digital statements rely greatly on the particulars of this transport, usage, production and disposal methods. Hence, the firm commissioned this research to ascertain the gap in GHG emissions and water intake from the life span of the firm's specific statement delivery methods, such as mill data from the three main paper providers.
The main outcome of this cradle-to-grave life cycle evaluation is that, depending on the premises of this research, accessible information, and under a situation where 25% of clients print their online invoices in home, the decrease in GHG emissions between newspaper and online statements is projected to be 67 g CO2e and the decrease in blue water intake (BWC) is 0.25 gallons of water every statement. The research has also found that if most of Bank of America statements sent in annually (551 million claims ) were sent on line rather than mailed as newspaper statements, this could lead to a reduction of roughly 37,000 metric tons of GHG emissions and 136 million gallons of water consumed when utilizing digital rather than paper shipping. This is roughly equivalent to the GHG emissions in the power use in 5,500 United States houses in a year (USEPA, 2017) as well as the water contained in 206 Olympic swimming pools.
The entire life cycle assessment has been performed by WSP USA. Neither the Environmental Paper Network or its associates have been included in this study at all.
You might even browse Bank of America's entire paper procurement policy here.
Blue Water Consumption = Volume of surface and groundwater absorbed because of the creation of a service or good.