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 many 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 60 to 80 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, landline phone, cable, and fiber 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 their 2-page bill to paperless.

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

If, however, four utility providers were to form a consortium for a common geographical area and send their bills to Cubby, not only would those 10,000 paper customers switch for one utility, but would switch for all four utilities. In addition, even more customers, say, 20,000, would be willing to switch. Those 20,000, each converting their four utility bills to paperless results in 80,000 bills converted to paperless.

A consortium of four utilities using Cubby is more likely to achieve 80,000 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.