Kaufland’s Call for Digital Receipts Met with Criticism Over Excessive Flyer Printing

A number of supermarkets and hypermarkets have a customer mobile application for their clients. Thanks to it, they can get more favorable prices for some products, view the flyer and also keep all the receipts from their purchases.

You can choose directly in the application whether you want to print a standard paper receipt or just a digital one. Kaufland has now called for this very step. Thanks to this, up to 44,000 kilometers of documents can be saved annually. However, people on social media reminded him of the leaflets that are still being printed in bulk.

“Use a digital receipt. In the Kaufland mobile application, you can choose an exclusively digital receipt when paying. Thanks to it, we can save up to 44,000 km of paper receipts per year. A digital receipt is a full-fledged equivalent of a paper document,” wrote Kaufland on social networks.

The post caused a great wave of reactions. It would be hard to find positive ones.

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“As always, Kaufland saves costs. And people need to be explained that it’s actually because of nature,” he said, for example. Another mentioned that the multinational corporation “imposes on us how we should live, what to do and what to buy”.

“It’s normal to live in your country, buy from your growers and your producers, and keep the sales in your country,” opined another.

But it also appeared that it is not about saving paper, but that stores want to have an overview and control over what we buy. Often, the very items that we buy most often appear at a discount in mobile applications.

Tons of unnecessary flyers?

“The use of a digital receipt is voluntary, each customer can choose this option in their application. Digital receipts in the Kaufland application are a full-fledged equivalent of paper documents. For the purposes of returning goods or complaints, the application stores them for three years,” Kaufland spokeswoman Renata Maierl mentioned to PrahaIN.cz.

However, the flyers bothered people the most. Kaufland wants to save paper from small receipts, but as one of the discussants stated: “When it comes to saving paper, a receipt won’t save it. I’d rather deal with flyers, that’s tons of paper. One just once a month would be plenty, and in the future only online.”

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And more were added. It bothered people that the flyers are only valid for a few days and then new ones are printed. They are then lying around in the corridors of apartment buildings, on the streets or in mailboxes.

“Doesn’t it bother you that paper tape measure ends up in the trash every week?” wrote the customer. And she wasn’t the only one. “Kilometers of paper receipts? So first, get rid of those tons of flyers in every entrance across the country. And then deal with some receipts,” also appeared.

However, Kaufland disagrees with the criticism. In the case of flyers, he says sustainability and a responsible approach to the environment are important to him.

“Not only have we optimized the number of printed leaflets, but only FSC-certified paper is used in its printing, which stands for Forest Stewardship Council – environmentally responsible, socially beneficial and economically viable forest management and wood processing. Since 2019, we have been printing our flyer on paper made entirely from recycled fiber. In addition, between the last two years, fiber consumption has decreased by 22.6 percent thanks to optimization,” says Renata Maierl to our editors.

Flyers at Kaufland are valid for a week by default, from Wednesday to Tuesday. Then a new one is printed. The current one has 49 pages. You can view it online one day before the start of the event.