Switching to e-billing could help feed hungry kids in the Soo

Push to go paperless for a good cause VIDEO: Sault Ste. Marie utility company donating to local youth nutrition program for customers who go paperless. Jairus Patterson reports.

PUC Services, a utility company in Sault Ste. Marie, is pushing customers to go paperless.

It wants to move everyone toward electronic billing and is customers an incentive to make the switch by offering to donate to help a local cause.

One of the charities that will benefit is the local breakfast program run by Algoma Family Services.

Health experts say breakfast is the most important meal of the day, but not every child gets to start their day with a healthy meal.

Emily Tremblay is the Food and Logistics Coordinator for the AFS program. She says her organization hears stories all the time about kids going to school with no food.

Algoma Family Services started its breakfast program 15 years ago and is now making sure almost every student in the region can access a free breakfast each day.

“For the 2018-19 school year, we fed about 3,500 students every single day. So, that works out to about 535,000 meals for the school year.” said Tremblay.

The cost to run the program is $400,000 a year, and now, the Sault's PUC wants to help out.

Giordan Zin of PUC Services says the cost to send utility bills in the mail is extremely high, which is why the utilities commission is trying to get customers to switch to e-billing, to save costs.

“We spend on average almost $300,000 a year just on postage. That's not letters, that's not envelopes, that's not staff time, that's just postage.” said Zin.

So, over the summer, the PUC says it will donate up to $10,000 to the nutrition program based on the success of the e-billing campaign.

"We set a target of 2,000 conversions, or 2,000 people to switch from paper billing to e-billing. So, that's what we want to do over the next two months, which is the length of this campaign." said Zin.

The donation will help dozens of students access nutritional food at school for free.

"We figured it out that it will feed about 26 students a day for the entire school year." said Tremblay.

Zin adds that if this program is a success, the PUC could do it again later in the year, with a different charity.

The company is also offering nine draws for $200 in credit as another way to entice people to sign up for paperless billing.