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Stores offer to send the receipt by email. The objective displayed? Reduce the impact on the environment by avoiding the use of paper. We investigated from the testimony of Anaïs to know if it was legal, what would become your data and if it was really a "green gesture".
All starts with the message of Anaïs, she sent us by pressing the orange button Alert us. She lived a "pleasant surprise"in underwear store."For the sake of ecology, the Etam store offered to send the receipt by email. It would then be printed only when needed for a return or exchange. What a saving of paper that would do if other signs followed the pace!"she hoped.
The idea seems very good … but it raises several questions:
- Does a store have the right to claim your email to send you the ticket?
- What will become of your email?
- Will not it be used to knock you out of promotions?
- And then … the use of computers and servers to send an email also consumes energy, is it so "ecological"?
Etam does not want to answer
To answer our questions, we first turned to the brand put forward by Anaïs. Etam uses a communications agency, Oona, for its press relations in Belgium. A friendly interlocutor notes our questions and transmits them to the sign. The days pbad … but still nothing. "My contact person at Etam did not know the answers. She asked internally, but no one answered. I can not do anything for you anymore"We are sorry, Etam does not want to communicate on this point, why, no idea … But we are continuing our research.
Can a store ask for your email to send the receipt?
The brand of underwear is not the only one to propose to its customers to send receipts by email. And your email is a bit like your mailing address. For a brand, it is a privileged point of entry to contact you. It is therefore sensitive information, even if we do not always think about it.
We therefore appeal to the Belgian Data Protection Authority (DPA). What's this? An organ that "ensures that personal data are used and secured carefully, and that your future privacy is also guaranteed".
So, do the stores have the right to collect your email for the receipt? The answer is yes. "Nothing prevents a store from asking for personal data to process it"says Aurélie Waeterinckx, spokesperson for ODA.
The application must, however, respect the law and the legal framework of the RGPD, General Regulation on Data Protection established by the European Union. "Consent must meet certain conditions. It must be free, specific, informed and not be obtained 'by default', that is to say that the customer must make a 'positive act' to consent, for example to sign a document, tick a box, etc."says Aurélie Waerterinckx.
In store, a simple oral agreement may suffice. But … normally, a company must hold the proof of consent. Companies are therefore advised to fill out a form. To avoid the use of paper (which is the goal displayed by the brands) it can be a form on a tablet for example.
What can the company do with your email?
Answering this question is very simple. The company can only do what the customer has consented to freely and informally. So, in this case, she can only use your email to send you the ticket. Unless the saleswoman has also offered to receive promotions, information … and you said yes.
The sign can however add something in the email of the ticket. "For example, she can add a link to subscribe to a newsletter, discounts, etc.", says the spokesperson of the ODA.
You may wonder if the company can use the list of your purchases to badociate it with your email, and thus send you personalized messages (depending on your purchases). Again, it depends on what you accepted. If the form specified the sending of personalized communications, suitable promotions … and you agree, it is that you give permission for your purchase information to be processed.
What are the rules that govern the use of my data?
The answer to this query is in the RGPD. In our case, the most important principles are:
- The consent must be specific: we accept a specific use of his email. It can not be used for anything else.
- Consent is informed: the client is informed of what he / she consents to, who will process his / her data and whether they are eventually transferred to other entities.
- Consent is free and easy to withdraw.
- Finally, the email you will receive with the ticket must indicate the details of the person responsible for processing your information. Because you can at any time ask him what data he holds about you and possibly delete or modify them.
To learn more about the GDPR, you can read this brochure by clicking here. It is aimed at SMEs, but you will find a lot of additional information.
Is an email really greener than a paper ticket?
A brand can therefore ask for your email to send you the receipt. Seduced by the idea, you are now wondering if it's really ecological. Because an email with an attachment will consume a little energy, it will be stored on a server, which consumes itself electricity, etc.
We turn to Ecoconso. It is a non-profit badociation financed by Walloon subsidies and own revenues from its services. Its role is to encourage behavior and consumption patterns that respect the environment and health.
For an energy advisor of the badociation, the answer is frank. "I would say that the consumer side is a little green cabbage and green cabbage: the impact is very very low", says Jonas Moerman.If he has the choice, he can always refuse the ticket, it is the best solution, or receive it by email or paper, which is convenient for keeping an accounting".
A technique of consumer influence?
Just before discovering if an email is more "ecological" than a paper ticket, remember that sending an invoice directly into your inbox can be an influence technique. The book of Robert Cialdini, "Influence and manipulation", which is extremely well known (it's a bit like the bedside book of any good salesman), explains this phenomenon very well.
This is the technique of thecommitment. It's a bit of the "foot in the door" tactic. The author takes the example of an badociation fighting against a disease. How to get more volunteers to actively participate in actions? In the example, the volunteers made a first door-to-door tour to ask residents a simple question: what would you say if you were asked to spend 3 hours to participate in an event? "Not inclined to be selfish, many said they would accept", says Robert Cialdini, while responding favorably, many residents engagedeven though it was a minimal commitment.
"This devious maneuver resulted in a multiplication by eight of the number of volunteers when, a few days later, a volunteer of the badociation solicited them"to really participate in a charity event, says Robert Cialdini.
"Engagement strategies are used against us by all kinds of persuasion professionals. All these strategies aim at pushing us to actions or statements that lock us into a meekly coherent attitude. The processes to create a commitment take various forms. Some are pretty straightforward, others are some of the most insidious", says the author.
In our case, the brand plays the card of ecology to make you agree to reveal your email address. This act creates a commitment to the brand. If the message containing the receipt later offers you to receive promotions, or even to buy a product, you will be able to accept much more easily. Why? Because you have already committed. You said "yes" a first time, so it's more likely to say "yes" a second time.
Let's move on to our second big question: Is an email really "green"?
The ecological impact of a piece of paper
We knocked on several doors, but it is very difficult to evaluate the impact of a simple receipt. Ecoconso still gave us some figures.
For paper and cardboard, every kilo of packaging avoided reduces the carbon footprint by 1.34 kg of CO2.
From this figure, we could extrapolate a vague estimate of CO2 avoided by not printing a receipt. It's very difficult and imprecise because it varies depending on the type of paper, the size, etc. But we tried the exercise, just to get an idea.
If we consider that a ticket weighs about 1.25 gram (one quarter of a normal A4 sheet), that represents 1.675 grams of CO2 avoided. Not bad thing at the scale of a ticket, but a nice economy when we know that about 1.2 billion tickets are issued each year in France (we did not get a figure for Belgium).
For information, here are the CO2 emissions avoided for all types of packaging:
- Paper / cardboard: carbon footprint of 1.34 kg CO2 eq. avoided / kg of packaging avoided
- Beverage cartons: carbon footprint of 3 kg CO2 eq. avoided / kg of packaging avoided
- Glbad: carbon footprint of 0.5 kg CO2 eq. avoided / kg of packaging avoided
- Plastics: carbon footprint of 2.5 kg CO2 eq. avoided / kg of packaging avoided
- Metals: carbon footprint of 3.5 kg CO2 eq. avoided / kg of packaging avoided
- Other: carbon footprint of 3.4 kg CO2 eq. avoided / kg of packaging avoided
Source: REPORT ON THE ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE DRAFT REGIONAL WASTE PREVENTION PROGRAM (Public Service of Wallonia)
The impact of an email
Evaluating the environmental consequences of a receipt was not easy. For an email, it's just as complicated. Because obviously, each email is different. "The impact of sending an email depends on the weight of the attachments, the storage time on a server but also the number of recipients. Multiply by 10 the number of recipients of an email multiplies by 4 its impact", says the French Agency for the Environment and Energy Management (ADEME).
Source: ADEME's "The hidden digital side" guide published in November 2018.
Here are some figures that we have been able to glean.
According to the book How Bad Are Bananas ?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything, which lists "the carbon footprint of everything", an average email represents 4 grams of CO2.
A study conducted in 2011 in France by the French Environment and Energy Management Agency (ADEME) is more precise: an email with a 1 MB attachment is 19 grams of CO2.
Where does this pollution come from? Especially equipment related to the operation of networks, and mainly data centers. Because the servers installed in these buildings consume a lot of energy, to work but also to cool down.
The email is not so ecological as that. "But compared to videos, it's very little. A ticket by mail must be a few tens or hundreds of KB", responds Jonas Moerman, of the non-profit organization Ecoconso.
Here is what the report "Lean ICT: for numerical sobriety", dated October 2018 says: "It would take 5 hours to write and send emails without interruption (ie 100 short emails and with a 1 MB attachment) to generate energy consumption similar to that caused by the viewing of a video of 10 minutes".
In terms of email, Jonas Moerman points to others "polluters"."Spam, newsletters, heavy mails that we keep for nothing … they clutter the mailbox and must be erased regularly"he advises.
Conclusion
Conclusion of our research? If you can, simply avoid receiving a receipt, either in print or by email. If you need to keep an account, simply note the price in your smartphone. Or check your bank statement online. You will not be able to check the price of each product bought, but you will make a small gesture for the planet …
To go further and reduce the impact of your behavior on a computer, check out these two guides:
The hidden face of the digital published in November 2018
Eco-responsible office published in January 2019
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