About 40 billion paper checks still are written annually in the U.S. 19 billion bills, totaling 533 million pounds of paper were delivered to American households in 2006. Delivering all that required nearly 235 million gallons of fossil fuels and created more than 1.3 million tons of CO2 emissions. You can save money, time, environment and protect yourself from identity theft by starting banking paperlessly.

When you sign up for paperless statements and schedule online payments, you speed up your banking, plus save money on envelopes, stamps, cheques. When scheduling automatic payments for reocurring montly bills, you also ensure you won't forget to pay - hence you don't end up with overdue fees.

Identity theft affects about 10 million people in US annually and is the top consumer complaint. Paperless banking is becoming popular rather slowly in US – while 60% of Internet-enabled households bank online each week, and 70% pay some monthly bills online, only about 40% forgo paper statements.

If you do get paper statements you have to find room for storing them or make sure to shred or destroy them otherwise so that they don't fall in the wrong hands. You don't have to spend your time on that when going paperless.

To protect yourself online, make sure you have a enabled your computer firewall, and have installed software that fights viruses and spyware. Never give your passwords to anyone (banks never ask you what your password is) and be careful to whom you give any other account information. Watch out for phishing, e.g. official-looking fake e-mails that ask for such information.

In the US you can find more about how to go paperless at payitgreen.org.