Every day millions of gallons of oil are used by commercial and personal vehicles. With no end in sight to the growing dependency on oil by heavy industries and consumers it might be time to take a different more drastic approach.

If we start with the premise that the US Postal Service, UPS, DHL, and Federal Express consume at least 50,000 gallons of gasoline a day, then we will be able to start seeing the savings this type of a plan can provide.

The next premise that we need to take into account that today every one in the United States has access to the internet, whether at home, at work, or through a local library or school.

What does the consumption of gasoline and internet access have in common?

That there is a significant percentage of gasoline, and oil, being used by businesses and consumers every time they interact with paper, whether it is driving to a local office supply store, delivering a ton of paper by freight, shipping documents through the mail or UPS, sending business documents by courier, or moving a billion catalogs through the mail every year.

Now while people and businesses should have the option of using paper, there are steps that Congress can take to curtail the high cost of all of the energy that is being used by processing and delivering paper products in the United States.

According to Donny Lowy, an online entrepreneur who is the author of Secrets of eBay and Selling Online: Beyond eBay, one of the first steps that can be taken is converting all government paper interaction into electronic communications.

“For instance, instead of distributing millions of paper tax return forms and then having consumers and businesses send back those forms, why not convert the entire process into an online transaction?”

“The cost savings would allow the federal, state, and municipal government organizations to set up centers to help people that require online access. And in addition every citizen can be given an official email address to use for all government correspondence. This email number can be administered the same way that a social security number is used.”

While Donny concedes that his plan would initially require a large investment to educate consumers and businesses, he feels that the savings would be recouped both in government expenses and in other sectors of the economy such as transportation, shipping, and energy usage.

“Think of how much stronger our economy could be in 10 years with this measure alone.”