Do you really need a receipt with that?

Retailers should take a page from Apple Stores and and make paper receipts optional

That quote comes from the late comedian Mitch Hedberg. I was reminded of it after I went to the post office earlier today in my friendly neighborhood grocery store. See, I needed a 2-cent stamp for a bill I had to mail out. (Thanks for the postage hike, USPS.) I handed the nice lady behind the counter a dollar. She handed me my change — and my receipt. You know, for the 2-cent stamp that she was affixing to the envelope she was about to send out for me.

The point, of course, is that paper waste clearly abounds in the business world — this was a great example — and the costs really can add up. An application such as GreenPrint can help address the problem in the office, but it won’t help in, say, the brick-and-mortar retail world, where I’d love to see a little receipt restraint.

For starters, I’d really like to see cash registers (and/or store policies) tweaked such that if the person behind the counter asks if I want a receipt, and I say, “No, thanks,” it (the register) doesn’t spew out a receipt anyway that gets tossed directly into the garbage. That’s just wasteful and pointless.

Of course, there are times when a receipt is necessary — but certainly not always a paper one, especially when e-mail is so prevalent. I’ve seen quite a bit of favorable buzz on various blogs about Apple Stores, where a customer has the option of having a receipt e-mailed to him or her, rather than taking a paper receipt. I think that’s a brilliant option for higher-end purchases that you more likely want and need a record of. It saves Apple from wasting ink and paper. It saves me the hassle of filing away a scrap of paper that I am much less likely to lose if I have a digital copy. But the option to take a paper receipt still remains.

The fact that so many people use credit and debit cards also makes a receipt obsolete in some scenarios. The purchase has been recorded not only on the seller’s systems, but also on your financial institution’s side. The risk of a company denying your purchase claim because you don’t have a receipt is — or should be — slim to nil. (I know that at stores such as Ross, Borders, and IKEA, I’ve been able to return or exchange items simply by handing them the credit card I used for my purchase.)

So there you have it, retailers: I’m joining the chorus of people who are essentially saying it’s OK, even preferable, for you to trim your office supply budget by not cranking out print receipts for each and every item you sell me. Sure, some people will still want and need those pesky slips of paper, whether for legitimate proof-of-purchase reasons, such as travel expense reports, or to indeed demonstrate that they are the rightful owner of that half-eaten bear claw.

What do you think? Would you be willing to forgo a receipt or accept a digital one via e-mail?