Receipts, unsolicited ad-mail, and other random scraps of paper...

I've been pondering more and more lately as we move further into this fabulous, amazing, whiz-bang electronic age that we are living in why I still manage to accumulate random little scraps of paper in my pocket and junk mail in my mailbox.  While buying a bag of dog food today, I acquired no less than three little scraps of paper from the retailer that got jammed into my pocket because there was no other option in which to place them.  Well, I guess I could have shoved them...

Ummm...

Nah, I actually like the owners of my local dog-food-procurement establishment.

At any rate, while going to another store afterwards and digging for some change in my pocket, I encountered these three little random scraps of paper in addition to some from a previous foray into a store, and became moderately annoyed when these scraps of paper impeded my ability to find the change I knew was there.

If I had one of these puppies I bet I could get my Utopia
established quicker.  Image from: 7 reasons to embrace
 junk mail from 7reasons.org. Junk mail still sucks, but the
post is amusing.

Regarding ad-mail, I've actually managed to finally get the mail man to stop putting unsolicited ad-mail in our mailbox by taping a small note inside the door asking him to refrain from filling our box with this crap.  I had requested it be stopped when we first got our mailbox, but obviously he forgot at some point and started stuffing it back in there again.  Hence, the reminder will stay in our mailbox for the rest of eternity, because I am tired of bringing this stuff home and jamming it straight into a recycle bag.

And Mr. Credit Card Pre-Approval that makes it through because it's actually addressed to me?  You can just fuck right off.  Although I guess it would come in handy if I wanted to buy all the crap in the unwanted flyer from the local big box store.

Long live consumer debt!

Then there is the latest, greatest, monthly catalogue from whatever online store I frequent.  The key word here being online.  If I wanted to buy any of your splendiforous crap, I'd go back online, to your online website where I find your online catalogue, and order my stuff online.

Speaking of online, I get a packing slip in anything I order online.  Why?  I know I ordered it, I was expecting it, and I'm not confused when this item arrives in my mailbox or via the UPS man.  I even have a confirmation e-mail of what I ordered, and am perfectly capable of checking the contents of the package against the confirmation e-mail.

My point in all this you ask?

Believe it or not, birds will actually make nests of this shit.
Hopefully the ink isn't toxic, however.  Mutant birds ain't
really my cup of tea.  Likely to be a remake of Hitchcock's
The Birds.  Now that was some scary shit.

I'm tired of having to shred, burn, or otherwise annihilate little scraps of paper that contain personal information.  And I'm tired of having to recycle crap that is designed to make me want to buy some other cheap piece of crap consumer good from some country halfway around the globe, or inform me about crap that I really could care less about.

You can go on until you're blue in the face to me about how a lot of this paper is produced from, and in turn recycled, blah, blah, blah, but the reality is if we didn't produce all this unwanted advertising and receipts and other junk in the first place we wouldn't even have to bother having a recycling infrastructure in place to take care of it.

Furthermore, if I'm using my bank card and Airmiles card to complete a purchase on your fancy, whiz-bang computer of a till, you likely have all my information... why do I need a little scrap of paper to return a product when you can just swipe my bank card and get all the information you need?  Because let's face it, despite all their assurances that it's all transparent and they don't store it, the reality is that all the information your favourite local retailer would need to have a no-paper receipt infrastructure in place is all out there floating around on the great, wide, nether-reaches of the internet anyways.  If the information can be transparent going in one direction, it can be transparent going in the other.

In the meantime, I'll just keep dreaming of my Utopia where there is no crap advertising flyers or little scraps of paper containing personal information.

My day will come eventually.

Yup.  That about sums it up.