In this blog, we have already covered some of the negative effects and impact that waste and pollution have on the environment, you can read more on this topic by checking our previous posts here. For the ones who did not read our previous articles and are unaware of the pollution situation, I will give a few numbers and statistics below:
- Over 4.8 million* tons of plastic is dumped into the oceans every year.
- Over 1 million seabirds and 100,000 sea mammals are killed by pollution every year*.
- Americans make up an estimated 5% of the world’s population. However, the US uses 25% of the
world’s resources – burning up nearly 25% of the coal, 26% of
the oil, and 27% of the world’s natural gas*. - 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water, and 2.4 billion don’t have* adequate sanitation.
How do you feel about all the paper and plastic coupons, membership cards, loyalty punch-cards you keep in your wallet (which often get lost or forgotten)?
Every time someone accepts a paper or plastic card they are contributing to this polluting process. That is why everyone should have a better understanding of mobile wallet technology. Let me explain this with an example:
Let’s say you are a bar owner and you have a paper membership card.
This is what happens when you implement your traditional loyalty program for your business. A tree will be cut down. The tree is then processed in a factory. The cards are shipped to your designer, who will eventually create them, print them off and box them up. Cards are then shipped to your bar, where someone needs to stop what they are doing to receive the box and sign for the invoice. That person then needs to take the cards to the desk and processes them (unbox, storage, stamp it etc). Each time a client wants a card, workers have to physically get the cards and give them out. Customers very often lose or forget their stamp-cards, and you can’t really measure how effective your program is performing.
One thing that really stands out in the above example is the inefficiency of the process.
Watch our YouTube Video on Cost and Waste reduction through Mobile Wallet Technology and see how mobile wallet reduces waste
The main idea behind mobile wallet as a green technology (and how mobile wallet reduces waste) is the substitution of plastic and card with digital content. By digitising physical materials, businesses will sensibly reduce the amount of waste, pollution and management costs. Other benefits of mobile wallet that businesses can not currently achieve through card and plastic are:
- Ability to get insightful analytics on customer behaviours (anagraphic data, trends, customer segments).
- Loyalty cards and memberships will not be lost since they are digitally stored in the phone.
- Opening of a new communication channel with customers, inluding the ability to push lock-screen notifications directly to their phones.
- Ability to implement a location-based marketing strategy through the use of beacons and GPS locations.
As you can see, mobile wallet enables the elimination of waste and the reduction of pollution, as well as offering a wide variety of advantages. I personally recommend you to have a look at this page to learn more. We also recently released a report on customer loyalty and engagement, which can help you understand the role of mobile wallet technology. It explains in details the current situation of customer loyalty and the hottest trends for 2016. You can easily download it here.
Lastly, you might be interested in watching some of our YouTube Videos on Mobile Wallet and Mobile Wallet Marketing. One of them is right below here.
Stay tuned for our next updates!
