With a large percentage of households in Singapore having Internet access, SP Services should let its customers choose the option of viewing their utility bills online or have the physical bill send to them. To encourage its customers to choose the first option, SP Services should give them a small monthly rebate for the first six to 12 months. As time passes, more will find it convenient to view it online and do away with the old, environment-unfriendly paper bill.

In an era of e-mail and video-conferencing, many have forgotten the humble Aerogramme which combines both letter and envelope in one physical piece. Likewise, SP Services should combine the bill and envelope together instead of having a separate piece of paper for its customers who prefer a paper bill. The bill can be reduced to just one page as the current format has many empty spaces and repetitive information. Saving one piece of A4 paper might not seem very much, but if you consider that SP Services sends out 12 times a year to the hundreds of thousands of accounts they serve, a lot of trees can be saved using an Aerogramme format.

In view of rising oil and commodity prices, it will only be a matter of time before the cost of paper, postage and printing will increase again and this cost will be directly or indirectly passed on to consumers.

Other large corporations like SingTel should also explore similar options for its customers. We need to start taking small steps and effort in saving our planet; we must remember that it is the many small steps that will go a long way.

Syu Ying Kwok