While there have been no shortage of doom and gloom headlines in 2020, the optimist in me couldn’t help but feel hopeful reading about some of the silver linings to come out of the COVID-19 pandemic. From the water in Venice’s canals clearing in days, to pollution levels dropping around the world, this pandemic has shown the clear negative impact that humans have on this earth and what it might look like if we learned to tread a little lighter on our planet
I care about the environment and try my best to limit my individual footprint by recycling what I can, opting to walk when possible and cutting down on waste. But a model eco warrior I am not - I own a car, I used to travel often which meant gas-guzzling jetliners, and I still use Ziploc bags instead of beeswax wraps (I’m a work in progress). I try to be eco-friendly as a business owner as well, and I’ve made Willful as paperless as possible — not just because of the positive impact on the environment, but because it’s just a huge hassle to print, sign, and scan things.
There were always certain things — benefits forms, government grant applications, tax returns — that required physical signatures in the office or at home. That is, until COVID. Now, it seems like every legacy industry or bureaucratic workplace has modernized by decades in the span of months. Pre-COVID you could already buy a house online, invest online, or do any number of other activities, but now you can do pretty much anything online — our current climate necessitates it.
In March when COVID hit Canada, we were already used to the digital limitations in wills and estates law in Canada. Each province has its own legislation governing wills and estates law, and nowhere in Canada is it legal to sign or store your will online. That means wills and Power of Attorney documents have to be printed and signed with ink (even if you take advantage of the special virtual witnessing orders due to COVID, you still have to print the documents and sign them with ink).
When Willful launched, we knew we couldn’t provide a truly end-to-end digital experience. We weren’t limited by technology; rather we were limited by the law. We provide our customers with PDF documents they have to print on their end in order to make them legal, so we never really saw the collective impact of thousands of customers printing thousands of pages. When COVID hit though, many Canadians lost access to printers, and we started offering a printing and shipping service (which sounds glamorous but was really my co-founder and husband Kevin and I assembling wills at our Prince Edward County home).
By the end of April we had printed thousands of pages of documents and packed them in hundreds of envelopes, and as we saw the stacks accumulate that’s when the true environmental impact struck me. Willful is one company providing wills, and it seemed like we had killed an entire forest in the first six weeks of COVID — but we had no other choice, and neither do Canadians.
We commissioned research with AngusReid and found that only 43% of Canadian adults have a will (you have to be the age of majority in your province to create a will — barring some special circumstances — and it’s 18 in most provinces). According to StatsCan, as of 2019 there were just over 30 million Canadians over the age of 18 — which means about 13 million Canadians likely have a will. If each of those wills was about 10 pages (some are likely less, some are likely much longer), that equates to 130 million pages printed, or approximately 13,000 trees.
This doesn’t take into account the millions (if not billions) of pages printed by anyone who passed away with a will in the last 200 years; people creating Power of Attorney documents (which also aren’t legal to sign electronically); notaries providing affidavits of execution or other documents that are often paired with wills; or the people who have created multiple wills in their lifetime. If you take all of those documents into account, it likely adds up to billions of pieces of paper printed.
Over 17 million Canadian adults don’t have a will yet; and millions of Canadians will come of age in the coming decades and need one. And that’s just Canada — can you imagine the number of pages printed globally? The U.S. just started to allow digital signatures on wills in certain states like Florida, but it’s likely that they’ve printed billions of pages of wills and Power of Attorney documents, and they continue to print hundreds of millions of pages a year.
This also doesn’t take into effect all the printers, printer ink, envelopes, and other supplies that have been used to produce these documents. Apparently people are buying printers again, and I’m 99% sure it’s not because they just LOVE buying ink cartridges — it’s because a law or policy requires them to print things on good old paper.
The pandemic has highlighted the need for digital processes, and this extends to estates law. We launched a petition in July asking Ontario’s Attorney General Doug Downey to amend the Succession Law Reform Act (which came into effect in the early 90s; long before electronic signatures were commonplace). Our reasons weren’t primarily environmental — rather, we feel allowing for electronic signatures, virtual witnessing, and digital storage of wills and Power of Attorney documents will reduce fraud, provide more evidence of capacity, and prevent wills from being destroyed — not to mention make it more accessible for consumers. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting paperless estate planning is the answer to our current climate crisis — the environmental benefits are a positive byproduct of a necessary modernization to antiquated laws that don’t reflect current consumer behaviour and technological advances.
Of course I have a vested interest in the laws changing — it means Willful can provide a truly digital experience, and ensure more Canadians are protected. But my vested interest is also because I’m a consumer who has a printed copy of my will at home, and I wish lawmakers and corporations could make some common sense modernizations to ensure I never have to print a piece of paper again.
If you agree that we should stop killing trees and allow digital signing/storing of wills in Canada, sign our petition now or share this article.
