This receipt from CVS was over three feet long!
I purchased exactly one item. How is this monstrous scroll of paper remotely necessary to document it? It's no wonder the world has conservation problems. . .
bioephemera
a blog about the intersection of science, art, and culture by Jessica Palmer, PhD
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Jessica Palmer has a PhD in Molecular Biology and has been blogging about the intersection of art and biology since 2006.
read the first BioE post.
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« No, it's not digital. Really. | Main | Who's migratory now? »
Oh, come on!
Category: Conspicuous consumption • Department of the Drama
Posted on: October 21, 2008 10:00 AM, by Jessica Palmer
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TrackBack URL for this entry: http://scienceblogs.com/mt/pings/83943
Comments
That is horrendous.
The other day I decided to save some space by putting all my DVDs in a book rather than keeping them all in their individual cases. I was appalled by how much waste paper there was and how much plastic was used to house the discs. I'll be glad when everything can be done electronically.
Posted by: Laelaps | October 21, 2008 11:05 AM
Wow! How many plastic bags did it take to hold all of that?
Posted by: Optimus Primate | October 21, 2008 11:09 AM
The product/receipt ratio at CVS has continually astonished me.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | October 21, 2008 11:24 AM
What is on the receipt? That is besides item, price and how you paid.
Posted by: Who Cares | October 21, 2008 11:37 AM
I know this is changing the subject a bit, but you know how grocery plastic bags are supposed to be hard to recycle, because people keep leaving the reciepts in them, and apparentnly the reciepts are hard to remove? Apparetnly they ship the bags all the way to china and get humans to take the receipts out by hand!
I always wondered why they didn't just make the receipt out of the same plastic the plastic bags are made out of. I suspect the problem is not significant enough to actually bother to solve.
Seriously. Why should I care? Nobody else does.
Posted by: Audrey | October 21, 2008 11:57 AM
Sad indeed but I'll bet part of it was advertising - one of the most wasteful pursuits of all time. A million pieces of mail for 10 responses, 3 feet of paper roll to catch a few eyes on a coupon, a billion spam messages to sell 100 'enlargement' pills. It's all simple economics. When the penalty in the cost for the paper or the fine for the spam gets greater than the return, it stops.
Posted by: Mike | October 21, 2008 12:19 PM
The bottom 2/3rds, for what it's worth, are coupons, not a record of your actual purchase.
Posted by: N.B. | October 21, 2008 12:34 PM
That happens all the time at Best Buy. I'll buy a DVD or video game and the receipt will be long enough that I could use it as gift wrap. Hmm... there's an idea.
Posted by: Mike V | October 21, 2008 1:39 PM
What a mess. I have been following this debacle for the past year.
http://johnohab.blogspot.com/2008/02/land-of-waste.html
http://johnohab.blogspot.com/2008/03/cvs-land-of-waste-reloaded.html
Posted by: John Ohab | October 21, 2008 1:53 PM
Yeah, it's mostly advertising - for products I have never and will never buy. Can't I opt out?
I hate receipts and immediately toss them, except for items that might need to be returned like electronics or clothes. I prefer the Apple Store's program that emails you your receipts.
On the other hand, the last time I had a problem with a purchase from the Apple store, they actually told me to print my receipt email and fax it to them. I pointed out the irony, but they really didn't seem to get it.
Posted by: Jessica Palmer | October 21, 2008 1:59 PM
John, your hard-hitting investigative journalism is what gave me the courage to bring this scandal to America's attention.
Posted by: Jessica Palmer | October 21, 2008 2:02 PM
But surely you need all the valuable customer information about all the GREAT BUYs available to you?
Posted by: llewelly | October 21, 2008 4:19 PM
Jessica, your beautiful smile at the absurdity of our consumer-driven culture makes you look really HAWT.
Posted by: Mark | October 21, 2008 4:31 PM
Uh, just to confirm: the item that you bought is actually listed somewhere in that three feet, right? Normally I wouldn't think I had to ask, but.... :p
Posted by: Stephanie Z | October 21, 2008 7:05 PM
One time I orderd, by mail, one of those thin postage-stamp sized card thingies that hold a dictionary for your Palm Pilot. I don't know what they're called. This single item came in a small plastic package that was packed with a bunch of bagged air pillows and all put in a box big enough to hold a pair of men's hiking boots!
Posted by: Mrs. Grackle | October 22, 2008 10:58 AM