After my experiences this year I have come to realise that frankly I can’t afford to go paper free. Like the next man or woman I care about the planet so much so that I am mulling over electric cars and have come to the conclusion I can live without a tropical suntan if humanity is safe for another 1000 years.

But – if I’d not had paper utility bills to pour over when I ought to have been having a life I would be something to the tune of £250 worse off. And conceivably a whole lot more better off but for the bills I am presently pouring over that are so unbelievably complicated I may never be able to argue a route to satisfaction. More of that later. 

Utilities and banks do a job selling us the concept of a paper free life in joyously environmentally friendly terms. Every which way we turn or click there’s smiling sunny bucolic world of carefree families embracing their ignorance for the bigger picture of climate change. It’s clear that each of us can do our bit by just doing away with paper. Think how cooler the world would be without a generation of fish ’n chips wrapped in newspaper and all those unenvironmental utility bills and bank statements. And to push those Luddites on the uncertain-what-to-do shelf over the edge they’ll charge them postage. Put like that  is it any wonder increasing numbers are choosing to be paper free and putting their trust in the due diligence and transparency of utility firms and banks. 

The flip side of paper free is the issuers can feel safe that most of us we the customer simply won’t have the time to dig into the email invoice beyond how much it is. Who looks at emails anyway unless they’re from hot babes or prize givers with the latest iPhones and bitcoin to give away?

Not having smart meters in The Red House requires someone to regularly read them and because the daily standing charge for some reason doesn’t cover the cost of a man with a meter box key and a tablet I’ve taken on board that responsibility and this despite the fact that the majority of our bills for gas, electricity and water state ‘we read’, an error or a bare faced lie depending on how you look at it. In nine years i can count on one hand the times I’ve let someone it to read the meters around the back behind a locked gate. One utility company didn’t believe me when I entered the reading on its website. The phrase on the screen read ‘…not what we expected,” due to the fact that my reading produced a figure less than the one they’d fabricated.

Being kind to the planet BT began charging for paper bills some time ago although they didn’t tell the marketing department to stop posting special offer letters. It also stopped ‘line rental savers’ deal and so as not to swindle customers like me any credit left on the bill – that I’ve hand to print out because BT is saving the planet – would come off subsequent online only bills perhaps in the hope that nobody would notice a change in how the bills are assessed unless you’re a no hoper like me who prefers bill inspection to daytime tv. It took a long time on the landline (remember them?) but eventually I

I was reaccredited the money from the line rental saver that had mysteriously disappeared.

The ‘unbelievably complicated bill’, owing to the language employed by South West Water being so unsparingly impenetrable, pertains to the odd fact that for the past seven years the water we have drawn from the mains ie usage is every time exactly the same amount in cubic metres as we pour into the sewer ie sewerage. Never close or thereabouts but precisely the same on each bill regardless of how much water is used to wash the car every two to three weeks or how much is used to irrigate Kim’s kitchen garden. Both filter water down to the subsoil and water table and don’t go anywhere near the sewers.

Of course trying to speak with someone at a utility is no easy task and South West Water is no exception. I learnt years ago not to talk to automated machines, better to wait until the ‘old git on the line’ alarm bells ring. Sadly, I think increasingly the utilities are wising up to that old git trick and just hang up. Frankly it all took so long I don’t know how I found an email address and forwarded my query. How can they know the usage and sewerage are the same?

The initial response stated that “sewerage charges are based on the amount of water measured by the meter” and that “a 5% allowance is given as standard.”

Confused? I was. How does the water meter measure the sewerage I asked for clarification. I wish I hand’t bothered.

Someone different replied, “when calculating what you should be charged for sewerage services, we first calculate the full monetary cost by multiplying the cubic metres (m3) of water you’ve used by our unit charge for sewerage. We then remove 5% of the total monetary cost, not the actual consumption in cubic metres – this is why your bills will never show that you’ve used fewer m3 in sewerage compared to clean water.”  

It doesn’t matter the usage and sewerage charged have been identical for six years; sorry about the planet but I have the bills. This is a work in progress. 

The point being that none of the false readings, the unconventional accounting or the supposed usage would have come to light without bills, and I’ve been thinking about these and the planet and how to square the circle and what I’ve come up with is this. All that recycled paper the council carries away every couple of weeks or so instead of being incinerated or ‘recycled’ in landfill or shipped out to parts of Africa where they can’t get enough of unwanted paper and stuff could actually properly be recycled and used for – you got it, utility bills and envelopes.