Businesses and individuals alike are realizing the benefits of going green. With the push for greener businesses, homes, and environments becoming a large issue, companies are looking for ways to reduce energy consumption and save paper. Near field communication technology takes a step in the right direction by cutting down on paper consumption for advertisements and communications.

Though businesses still print ads to put NFC tags on, they can reduce the amount of extra paper circulated with each ad. Instead of distributing flyers for a house for sale or a clearance event, a large sign can have an NFC tag that users wave their smartphone over to get all the information they need about the event. This cuts down on the amount of material printed for an advertising campaign. This is especially important since all that paper is typically thrown away after the sale ends.

Coupons are another way NFC technology can cut down on paper consumption. When your business switches to coupon distribution electronically, customers can load coupons onto their smartphone and pay without ever needing to pull out a piece of paper. Customers can delete the coupons they don’t want instead of throwing piles of unwanted coupons in the trash.

NFC technology not only lets businesses go green, but it saves money as well. NFC tags are relatively cheap to create and use, and can be altered as needed. Customers will often prefer shopping with a merchant that uses NFC technology over traditional paper coupons and credit card payments. It means the customer has less junk to keep track of, since everything is stored on his smartphone, and can increase repeat visits from that customer.