This just out in the Ankara Daily News: E-signatures save forests!
“According to the Consumer Protection Law, the processes for warranty papers and after-sale service papers have been done via electronic media since Jan. 1, 2008.
In 2008, as a result, 2.6 million signatures were not scribbled on paper in 54,214 transactions, thus saving 1.9 million pages of A4 size paper, which weighs 9.4 tons. This amount saved the felling of 1,600 trees, which equals 8 square kilometers of forestland. It also prevents 3,382 tons of greenhouse gas from being released into the atmosphere.”
Interesting math as it seems to assume that the documents are never printed, maybe a good assumption for this category of document.
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Hard to tell about the numbers, but they sure put a lot of signatures on each transaction for “warranty papers and after-sale service papers,” whatever those all are. I thought only mortgage docs were that poorly constructed by our legal profession.
Our experience is that only about one quarter of our customers stay electronic for the vast majority of their electronic contracts. Some people just can’t help but print and file, and we’ve heard about situations in which an electronically signed document is printed multiple times (such as once by each party involved) just to show things can actually get worse in this respect. Some then even fax those, so it can escalate.
Time will resolve this bad printing habit that generally shows the advanced mental age of the parties involved, but for now, claims about “green” for electronic contracting are sorely misplaced in practice.
We manage to avoid printing any electronic contracts, but we’re in the roughly 25% minority.