Plastic straws? Out! Car window tinting? Out! Paper receipts? Out?
Yes that's right, paper receipts could be a thing of the past in California if Democratic Assemblyman Phil Ting gets his way.
Ting, of San Francisco, unveiled his plan Tuesday to take the state off of printed receipts. "Under Assembly Bill 161, businesses would have to give customers electronic receipts if they don’t ask for physical copies," the SacBee reports.
“Most people assume that all these receipts can be recyclable. Guess what? They can’t,” Ting said. “It’s common-sense legislation. We think it’s a minimal cost, and it’s really putting the power back in the consumers by saying, ‘Hey, if you want the paper, yeah, you can ask for it, but why force you to take the paper?’”
If the bill passes, California would be the first state in the country to use electronic receipts as the default instead of paper ones. The plan would go into effect at the start of 2022.
President of the California Retailers Association Pamela Williams said it’s too soon for the group to take a position on the bill, stating she has concern how the proposal would affect smaller retailers who can't afford to invest in software that would offer e-receipts.
Ting argued that small businesses would not be exempt from the law. “Small businesses have already adopted this much faster,” Ting said. “It’s really many of these larger, older, legacy systems that haven’t caught up to today’s times.”
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