Cash - expensive - also for the environment..

EU published some figures on cost of handling cash - 50bn per year - and the consumer pays every cent of it - without knowing how much we would all save by keeping money in digital form all the way with the help of plastic cards (which of course will disappear when their functionality moves to mobile phones in due course).

It would be interesting to also know how much the environment is loaded down by the 50bn/pa circus of heavily protected daily convoys of armoured cars transporting cash to ATMs and bank branches to be taken to shops and deposited by them to banks in the evening and from there back to central banks in the night and back again...

How many robbeires, counterfeit, black economy and other crime is caused by too much use of cash? What is the cost of this for EU citizens. Does he know? Does media inform?  Why is there a 500€ bill btw? What is it used for?

What about the consumer ombudsmen - do they have time for the really big cost savers?