Enhance Sustainability Efforts Through a Consortium of Utility Providers

Because of the nature of utility companies that interact in some fashion with natural resources, lessening their impact on the climate and environment is an important area of focus.

For most companies, the paper consumed when sending bills to their end customers is a major ecological concern and part of their public environmental image. As such, nearly all utility companies offer a paperless option. (Of course, there is a financial incentive as well as the environmental benefit, since switching to paperless reduces the impact of ever-increasing postage and production costs.)

In a survey conducted by Cubby Paperless, most customers agree (64%) that paperless is better for the environment. However, other studies show that 50 to 70 percent of customers still get their bills on paper.

Cubby Paperless consolidates customers’ bills into one online location. Cubby’s survey showed that many customers (91%) would switch more of their paper bills to paperless if their bills were on Cubby.

An Environmentally-Focused Consortium

Having bills from a single company posted on Cubby does not attract customers and will not change their minds about paperless delivery. But finding bills from four or more companies on Cubby will change customer behavior for all the utilities.

In each geographic area, such as a city, a consortium of utility providers who post customer bills to Cubby will benefit all the participating service providers. Through the cooperation of the utilities such as the electricity, water, natural gas, sewer, trash, phone, and cable providers, the residents of a city could receive all their utility bills in one place.

As customers recognize the value of Cubby, they will switch off paper, allowing all the companies of the consortium to make progress towards their environmental sustainability goals.

A Paperless Adoption Calculator

Kubra provides a calculator which shows the estimated annual impact if 10,000 paper-bill customers were to switch to paperless.

These results assume one utility provider can accomplish this conversion by themselves.

If, however, five utility providers were to form a consortium for a common geographical area and send their bills to Cubby, those additional 10,000 paper customers would be able to use Cubby, and be more willing to switch to paperless. But not just for one utility. Each of those 10,000 customers would have an incentive to switch to paperless for all five utilities, resulting in 50,000 bills converted to paperless.

A consortium of five utilities using Cubby is more likely to achieve 50,000 conversions than just one utility trying to get 10,000 conversions on their own. A consortium is more likely to succeed, and the result is a bigger estimated environmental impact.

Organize a Utility Consortium

Make a jump in your sustainability efforts and organize a consortium of utility providers in your city by contacting Cubby, info@cubbypaperless.com.

Research for yourself: Find more details about the numbers cited in this article and about unmet customer yearnings for consolidated bill facilities in this white paper, Overcoming Customer Resistance to Paperless Bills and Statements.

A note from Kubra: Please be advised there are environmental costs associated with sending e-bills, such as carbon, water, and land footprints that were not considered here.