Banks Help You Go Green with Direct Deposit
These days, when you think of banks you probably think: big, bad, wasteful or some combination of those words. However, there is at least one thing they can help you do which has a huge positive impact on the environment: get paid paid by Direct Deposit. Besides having your money in your checking account immediately instead of having to remember to go to the bank, deposit a check, and wait for it to clear, a new study sponsored by the 2009 PayitGreen Alliance actually quantifies how direct deposit can reduce your carbon footprint.
If you switch to direct deposit, in one year you will:
- Save one pound of paper.
- Eliminate the release of four gallons of wastewater.
- Eliminate the release of one pound of greenhouse gases -- this is equivalent to not driving four miles and preserving half a square food of forest for 10 years
That's pretty good, right? Well is everyone who could use direct deposit actually used it, the results would be staggeringly huge:
- Save 11,082,971 pounds of paper
- Avoid the release of 105,709,380 gallons of wastewater
- Save 4,105,889 gallons of gas
- Avoid the release of 31,581,675 pounds of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which equals:
- 112,329,703 miles not driven
- 1,345,379 trees planted and grown for 10 years
- 13,756,978 square feet of forest preserved
Not to mention how much is can save a business, which these days can mean saving jobs! If you have a business and want to calculate how much you can save, check out the Direct Deposit Cost Calculator on ElectronicPayments.org.













