Feelings of guilt and concern are on the rise about the use of paper and its alleged impact on the fate of trees and the environment. Are these feelings justified? Nothing captures the essence of these feelings more vividly than the signature line appearing at the foot of more and more emails:
"Please consider the environment before printing this email."
This seemingly well-intentioned plea suggests that digital communication is greener than paper based communication. But is it? If your goal is to save trees or do something good for the environment, the choice to go paperless is not as green or simple as some would like you to think.
Could our increased reliance on consumer electronics and cloud-based computing infrastructure be more destructive to the environment than paper-based communication media? The short answer is yes, but there is a longer answer as well:
Business, government and day-to-day life depend on both print and digital media to a far greater extent than is commonly realized... but neither is without its pluses and its minuses. There is no question that print media can and must do a better job of managing the sustainability of its supply chains and waste streams, but it’s a misguided notion to assume that digital media is categorically greener.
Print may not be as bad as you think and digital media may be worse than you know. It is possible for paperless communication to have a smaller environmental impact than print, but all too often proponents of digital media and paperless communication fail to provide credible evidence to support their claims.
Paperless appeals tend to use emotionally charged rhetoric to confront consumers with a false dilemma: "By using paper and print media you are knowingly degrading the environment, destroying forests and/or killing trees." They play on the primordial human affection for trees to make us feel guilty or hypocritical by suggesting that the use of paper-based media despoiling nature and killing trees. In effect, the forced choice they present is:
"Go paperless or feel like a guilty hypocrite who kills trees." 
This article does not make a case that print is categorically preferable to digital media. Rather, it presents evidence that our digital media choices can have significant unintended environmental consequences. It challenges consumers to look beyond the rhetoric to the hidden environmental aspects and impacts of BOTH print and digital media so they can make informed decisions.
Please take a few minutes to read the rest of this article and post your comments, questions and suggestions. If you find the article thought provoking you can learn more by visiting ISC’s website.
Does Print Kill Trees or Grow Trees?
Proponents of going paperless have waged an effective rhetorical assault on paper-based media that selectively uses “facts” to depict digital media as green and print media as a major cause of deforestation, despite the fact that the ravenous energy demands of cell phones, game consoles, computers, telecommunication networks and data-centers can be linked to some of the most egregious deforestation, environmental destruction and human costs in the United States.
In response to the paperless onslaught, the Print Grows Trees campaign recently launched by the Printing & Graphics Association MidAtlantic challenges the widely held belief that by using less paper trees will be saved, and makes the case that demand for responsibly sourced print media actually helps to grow trees and keep our forests from being sold for development. One of the questions they ask is “Does Mountaintop Removal Grow Trees?”
Digital Deforestation?
The fact is that neither print nor digital media supply chains are sustainable as currently configured, but until recently paper-based media got most of the blame for deforestation and pollution and digital media's dependence on coal-powered electricity went largely unreported. However, there is growing recognition that digital media technology uses significant amounts of energy from coal-fired power plants making a significant contribution to global warming. What is less widely known is that mountaintop-removal coal mining is also a major cause of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and the pollution of over 1,500 miles of headwater streams in the United States.
Next Page: How Green is Your Digital Media?
Message value : Media impact
The problem, as I see it, is we are comparing media without discussing the value of message.
Worthless messages are a waste of material and energy - regardless of medium. I would argue that much of what is delivered in both print and digital media is complete junk today and all junk messaging creates a negative impact. Any advertisement you ignore (which is almost all of them) is a waste. Most marketing is waste. Junk communication is the enemy here, not paper or digital.
There is simply no free communication (sorry EFF). Any transmission of information, on any medium, involves a cost. It is just physics.
Theoretically those costs could eventually be easier to manage, track and optimize in a digital medium, but that is often not the case today.
Another major variable is the % of clean, renewable energy sources which power the infrastructure you happen to be using in designing, delivering, hosting, and consuming any given message. This has little to do with either the Forestry or IT industries, and yet has a huge effect on the relative impact of one medium over another at any given time.
That said, Forest ecosystems are WAY TOO IMPORTANT in this moment on our planet to be using for passing ephemeral messages around - and IMO we should be ceasing all harvesting of forests immediately. Paper should cost a lot more than it does today, as should digital communication. Paper should be reclaimed from garbage and industrial /agricultural waste. Or even from a closed loop-artifical material stream. Call me a hippy, but I would love it if there were never another virgin tree pulped to deliver a message upon - period.
FWIW, I'd also like to have message transmission over the internet be far more expensive - at least costly enough that it forces spammers to recalculate their bottom line.
Either way, the cost involved in commercial communication should include the environmental impacts (which are a moving target) - regardless of which media are used. This idea that paper is cheap and the internet is free so who cares how much junk messaging you send...that is the real problem.
If inlcuding these costs made advertising and marketing all of a sudden 10x more expensive, then there would be an instant pressure to evolve our existing models of advertising to become more efficient. That would create pressure to innovate in all aspects of communication media - both in terms of media and message efficiency. That would be true progress toward sustainable communication.
I'd like to see us all work on becoming radically more effective in communication overall - especially in commercial communication, instead of endlessly debating paper v digital. Both are very impactful, and both have unique opportunities to become less impactful if the pressure existed to innovate in that direction. The point is tha impacts should be embedded in the cost of usage - which is artificially cheap and supports a culture of wasteful, trashy, useless, ineffective communication.
Andrea Mangini
A good example of what you're talking about....
http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?catg=612
Don, I've read through your article, the comments, and replies to comments - and it's clear that there some misunderstanding as to the point.
It's claims like the above that are hurtful to the cause of us all trying to do better. "Conserve our natural resources. Go Paperless. Text "Green" to..." If you follow the link to find out more - it takes the reader to a sign up page to get promotional texts (on your dime) from Sam's Club.
How is this saving our natural resources? I never knew I could solve the Earth's environmental challenges by simply signing up to receive text alerts when there's a sale on lawn furniture. GREAT!
Don, in my opinion, this is EXACTLY what you're article is about - the ridiculous false claim that eliminating paper is always "going green" and "conserving our natural resources."
Digital Life Is
This is a very interesting conversation. Given the complexity of the questions at hand, not surprisingly it seems to have shifted to a digital vs print environmental volley. Funny enough it is an argument that Don Carli didn't really seem to be making in his writing. Now there's lots of good reasons to use digital media, but those who argue it is more eco-friendly than print are missing the point or perhaps not looking closely enough at the data. So instead, they have opted to attack Carli as dishonest or suggest he might be a shill for the power, paper, or printing industry.
The reality is that print and paper are a completely renewable resource. It is bio-degradable, reusable, recyclable, and reclaimable. Ongoing demand for paper fuels responsible forestry. Since forests sequester carbon, this is probably a good thing for the planet & humans. Considering it is illegal in 50 states and the District of Columbia to throw your cellphone, computer, iPAD, Kindle or most other electronic devices into the trash ought to tell us something. While Carli didn't address it, we have a huge electronic waste problem in this country---one that technology companies---are all too happy to export to other countries and hide from their end-users. Check it out for yourself at: http://www.electronicstakeback.com That's the real conundrum with digital---we love the convenience and how smart these machines make us feel---but we don't have a clue of what it truly costs (environmentally, speaking) to produce them, recharge them, recycle or destroy them throughout their lifecycle. Want a million dollar idea? Create a true cost of ownership assessment for all things electronic. I suspect it would be a real conversation starter.
Finally even if you aren't convinced your breezing around the Internet isn't endangering the environment, or that e-mails are more eco-friendly, it's interesting to note that SPAM e-mails sent annually have the same carbon footprint as driving a car around the globe 1.6 million times. (The Carbon Footprint of Email SPAM Report - McAffee) You see, it's not just what you do with your computer that matters, it's what others do as well. Oh, and that 12 hours a week of Internet browsing---that's about 300 pounds of coal per year, per person, to fuel the power plant that creates your electricity. With Earth Day on the horizon this week, as Carli suggests it's better we all have a deep understanding of what's at work in this brave new digital world.
this article seems dishonest
I read the article because I've seen some real debate over whether printing a 200 page conference guide is worth replacing with a flash drive, which I've intuitively doubted, so I came in looking forward to the article.
But this article reads like a PR fluff piece. First, I can't imagine (and this key issue is ducked) that the energy used in cutting, processing, shipping paper to my house plus building and using the printer isn't *vastly* more than the energy to store and read an email electronically. [Plus river pollution.] Never mind the trees, printing is going to lose out on the energy contest as well. So keep displaying the "Please don't print this email."
The article runs over some real issues: how many hours are we online doing things like Farmville or these comments, and the total energy used for all computer activities is very large. But the article creates a false contest between all computer activities and printing -- storing a document on your computer requires few resources. Talking about computer energy use in total looks like smoke and mirrors compared to "should I print or electronically share a document or email."
The article implies that anti-printing supporters haven't done their research, and is slightly insulting in the process, but doesn't provide any real counter evidence.
There is validity that we do too much online without noticing the consequences, and if you would have to buy a new server or flash drive just to handle documents there may be real choices there -- but replacing print with online seems as much a slam-dunk argument after reading this article as it was before.
Still waiting for real environmental analysis on the costs of printing and electronic documents.
Which side to pick? Both? Are you sure?
Dear Don,
Thanks so much for your article. I actually just had a conversation with my wife last night about this very same subject. We were watching An Inconvenient Truth (we live in South America and many movies/stories aren't as widely spread as we might like to think in the US) and there were many photos of both deforested land (and accompanying fires) and blown mountain tops with crevassed mining operations.
It is true that with these two opposing ideas, there are two stories. But you make a point, subtly in the article, but more substantial in your comment responses – we need BOTH print and electronics. The article isn't so much about paper vs. silicon, but rather that we should be more aware what environmental impact each of these items has on the world and our lives. Thank you for making that point!
But like a number of the initial commentors make, the story is one sided. It seems amazing to me that it took Franke James for you to provide a source for how we can solve the energy problem of electronics, whereas, you came to the rescue in providing a reference to the reforesting plans now in place. Thank you for providing the information - at long last.
In addition to the end resolution, I think that it's a difficult situation to lean one of these products (and yes - they are consumptive products, which is a whole other article) against the other. For one, to measure the affect that paper has on our society - has on the world - is practically impossible. Though one may want to send a hand written condolence letter, there is also ENERGY costs that takes to get it from one person to another. What are the energy savings that electronics provides in reducing the amount of shipping paper books and paper letters across the world on a daily basis?
I don't need these statistics, I need solutions. And while we argue all day long about which is better for the environment, the fact remains that we need to be conscious of the problems, and active in the solutions.
My last point comes from the fact that I live abroad. Yes, the US is responsible for a massive amount of environmental damage and for contributing massively to the change in our global temperatures. However, it is not the only one. And we need to not only provide US references – mining in the Congo and Rwanda for Colton (in every cell phone in the world) has almost decimated the mountain gorilla population – but also provide information on how to resolve the problem for the globe – Wangari Mathaai's quest for planting 1 billion trees.
In the next step for change, I ask that you make your point more clear in your article - that we need to be more conscious of where are products come from - and that you provide solutions for both sides of the story - that reforesting is important, just as renewable energy sources such as solar and wind can reduce carbon usage.
Thank you again for your article.
Andrew
Help
I have never heard of "Tree Wash". What is it?
Tree-wash
SourceWatch defines Greenwashing as the unjustified appropriation of environmental virtue by a company, an industry, a government, a politician or even a non-government organization to create a pro-environmental image, sell a product or a policy, or to try and rehabilitate their standing with the public and decision makers. TerraChoice defines greenwash as the act of misleading consumers regarding the environmental practices of a company or the environmental benefits of a product or service.
http://sinsofgreenwashing.org/
“Tree-Wash” is my term for a special class of “greenwash” in which brands make false, misleading or unsupported marketing claims that ignore the deforestation and land-use change associated with digital media and information technology supply chains, or failure to identify the actual trees and forests allegedly being saved or planted.
Deforestation, illegal logging and land-use changes that result in greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental damage are serious matters that billions of people care about. With today’s advanced remote sensing and geo-location capabilities consumers have every reason to expect marketers making claims about their offerings saving trees, or resulting in the planting of trees, to identify the trees in question and account for the life cycle impacts associated with their products. Even if the FTC does not yet prosecute such cases, that would not preclude a competitor from calling on the National Advertising Review Council to review the truthfulness and accuracy of a green marketing claim.
As we enter the “Post Madoff” trust-but-verify age of social-media powered transparency and climate awareness, it is becoming more possible and more important than ever to monitor the green message content and supply chain impacts of advertising and marketing.
Pixels may not grow on trees, but it is increasingly likely that remote sensing and augmented reality pixels can and will be used to hold marketers responsible for the carbon footprint of their media supply chains as well as for the truthfulness and accuracy of advertising claims they make about saving or planting trees.
For a more extensive look at the issue you may find this recent article of interest:
http://blog.green-consultancy.com/2009/12/21/reducing-deforestation-and-...
The Future ... is now.
I have always felt it is important to look and listen to both sides of a discussion. Reading this thread has been a tremendous education for me in learning about print vs. digital. Thank you everyone.
My only comment is I refuse to give up my TP.
Paper is a Disposable Luxury. Computers are Essential.
I agree with several comments made so far. Digital devices are something we all use multiple times a day — whereas many printed communications (e.g. print newspapers) get read once (or maybe not even read) and thrown out.
Essential vs. Disposable Luxury
Which would you choose to get rid of if you had to make a choice? Your laptop or your printed newspaper? For me, it’s no question. The newspaper on newsprint is a disposable luxury. It’s totally unnecessary.
I also wonder whether these studies are funded by the Pulp and Paper or Printing industry… They have a lot to lose.
What I’m seeing in our design client’s behavior is that many are dropping print. It makes sense — the savings in printing costs by going paperless are substantial. We have clients who have discontinued printing annual sales brochures and justified it by hopping on the green bandwagon. One client’s savings have been upwards of fifty thousands dollars.
I just wrote a piece about students at the University of Colorado trying to get their student newspaper to go paperless -- but getting big resistance from the editorial staff.
Students “doing hardest thing first” face opposition in Colorado Springs
http://www.frankejames.com/debate/?p=987
Franke James
Computers & Paper, Digital Media AND Print Media are Essential.
Dear Franke:
Thank you for sharing your thoughts… and for identifying yourself.
Unfortunately, I seem to have failed in making a key point:
Forced choices like the one you present between your laptop or your printed newspaper, and failure to ask the right questions are a major problem.
We need BOTH print and digital media, and we need them to be synergistically bound a greater extent than is commonly understood.
We also need BOTH to become radically more sustainable than either is today.
Neither print nor digital media can afford to be disposable luxuries.
Moreover, we cannot not afford to cast one aside without informed consideration or to rely to heavily on only one, because neither print nor digital media are based on supply chains that are sustainble today. Sometimes doing the hard thing first is not the right thing to do, however I applaud your efforts to stimulate informed debate.
If you care about creating the basis for a sustainable future, or if you care about the environment and the health of forests, you should become more informed about the energy sources used by both digital AND print media today, and what they could potentially be in the future.
Research recently published by Bell Labs concluded that today’s Information and Communication Technology (ICT) networks have the potential to be 10,000 times more efficient than they are today! http://www2.alcatel-lucent.com/blog/2010/01/greentouch-making-communicat...
Rather than being powered by coal, more of our datacenters and IT infrastructure could be powered by a new generation of forest bio-refineries that could sustainably produce energy, biofuels, polymers… and paper with renewable forest biomass. http://wecnews.wisconsinenergy.com/news/newsrel/pages/newsrelease_143
You need not wonder if the the forest products, pulp and paper industries are funding studies on this issue. AF&PA, FPAC, the USDA, the US Department of Energy and others are doing so, precisely because ALL of us have a great to loose if they don't.
Unfortunately, public awareness of efforts to transform the forest products, pulp and paper industries into a sustainable source of jobs, renewable power, responsibly produced paper… and more lags the perception that paper and the industry that produces it are disposable.
One of the studies you may find of interest is The Future Bio‐pathways Project, ann extensive study examining a wide range of options for renewal of the Canadian forest products industry.
http://www.goforwood.info/fr/news.php?id=29184
Also:
http://www1.eere.energy.gov/biomass/integrated_biorefineries.html
http://www.nrel.gov/biomass/integrated_biorefinery_research_facility.html
http://www.flcmidwest.org/200606_04.html
http://www.forest-products.org/
http://www.fao.org/docrep/008/j5135e/j5135e00.htm
Making this "accessible" information for the masses
This information is thought-provoking and important to consider, but I kept thinking that if so many words were needed to describe the conundrum to keenly interested GreenBiz readers, it might be REALLY hard to persuade consumers to more deliberately ponder their digital/print choices. As with so much in this sustainable movement (that we all are excited to see gaining momentum, finally) - it's about figuring out how to communicate and educate the masses so they can make better decisions. The average consumer would (likely) be overwhelmed by all this information, and stick with what that simple "think before you print" frame of mind. Therein lies our challenge.
Neither accounting nor the calculus is accessible for the masses
Dear Andrea:
Many thanks for taking time to share you thoughts on the issue of communicate the conundrum more effectively!
Neither accounting nor the calculus are accessible to the masses but that doesn't mean they are not worth doing.
Emotional appeals can be all too easy to understand. That is precisely the problem.
Unfortunately, without doing the science and the accounting required to credibly support emotional appeals we run the risk of changing attitudes and behaviors in ways that can cause unintended negative consequences. This is precisely the effect of promoting well intentioned but uninformed slogans like:
"Think about the environment before you print this email."
Our challenge lies in creating and linking simple compelling actionable messages to sustainable outcomes… ie. outcomes that can be credibly accounted for as having met the needs of present generations without crossing irreversible thresholds that limit the ability of future generations to do the same.
What happened to the end to end analysis in this article?
Sure, based on this article, it does seem that digital media vs paper is a valid argument - but what's missing is the end to end analysis of digital media vs paper.
Take paper forms vs e-forms: paper forms has an impact from the consumer end all the way to the organisation processing the paper forms. In Australia, there's a standard paper archiving requirement where paper forms must be archived for a period of 7 years before its destruction. Lets look at this example: a paper form would need to be printed from the consumer end, sent through the postal service to reach the processing centre or the relevant organisation, it gets processed by the organisation into a (surprise, surprise) database, and once it has been processed, it will then be sent to an archiving centre, which is transported by a courier or truck, and stored in a facility that has its own environmental footprint. Not to mention the fact that with paper forms, processing takes much longer (unless you incorporate OCR technology).
Eforms introduces automation, ease of transfer, ease of storage and better archiving accessibility. What you save is time, effort and increase efficiency. In turn, this has other benefits: better value added processes, reduction in error minimises rework, and removes the need for logistics. Sure, there's e-waste and the fact that power consumption is still evident, but with the rise in renewable energy, this might soon prove digital media to be far more sustainable than paper.
Computers are already here ... and not going away.
The pervasive IT infrastructure of modern society certainly uses a tremendous amount of electricity. However IT brings a level of improved efficiency to everything that we do that we'll never abandon. We won't go back to snail mail because e-mail is faster and cheaper. We'd have to hire armies of clerks and build huge warehouses to store all of the information now recorded electronically. Even if we all went back to paper billing tomorrow, very, very few of the world's computers would be retired, so little power would be saved.
There is hardly an IT organization in the world that is not working to make their operation more power efficient (for the green of money if not the green of the environment). The answer is not to print more but to use computers more wisely.
As dependent on imported paper as imported oil
I agree that email is faster, but the assumption that it is "cheaper" depends on how you account for the environmental externalities associated with IT infrastructure and the risks of over-reliance on a single communication medium. There are also unintended consequences of eschewing snail mail or print based media that is effective and based on sustainable use of energy, materials and human labor.
If we assume that papermaking and print are to blame for deforestation without basis in fact and allow those industrues to continue their precipitous decline we may be as dependent on imported paper in 10 years as we are on imported oil today. It is prudent to examine how the transformation of forest products, papermaking and printing industries can be undertaken in ways that provide new sources of renewable power for digital IT and viable alternatives to less-effective and unsustainable uses of digital media.
Sponsored by?
From the looks of it, this piece might have been written with generous assistance from one of the paper companies or publishers.
The only meaningful statement in this article is that data centers consume energy. Anything that relates to comparison of carbon footprint of digital vs. print communication is very poorly supported.
Paper production alone has a very extensive supply chain and includes multiple operations (harvesting, transportation, paper mill boilers, pulp production, drying, coating, etc.) that are not only energy intensive, but also use a cocktail of chemical substances. On top of paper production, we have the actual printing/publishing with its own electricity bill, toxic ink, and distribution mileage.
Compare Scope 1 and 2 emissions reported by, say, IBM (one of the largest data storage providers) and a US paper company - I have International Paper handy.
Scope 1 emissions: IBM 0.58 mln CO2e, Int'l Paper 10.96 mln CO2e.
Scope 2 emissions: IBM 2.4 mln CO2e, Int'l paper 4.95 mln CO2e.
I also do not understand the author's persistent reference to coal-based energy sources for digital media. Is it implied that servers burn coal? They use electricity from the grid, the very same electricity used by milling, drying, coating, printing and other processes. Moreover, data centers are less dependent on common grid and often use locally generated energy.
Digital media also provides various opportunities for resource conservation, such as co-hosting, server virtualization, deduplication, etc. It has no by-product waste or waste from operations. Comparing environmental impact from the data centers e-waste is only relevant when comparing e-waste stream from paper & printing production equipment.
Of course data centers consume energy and have environmental impact, but one does not need explicit evidence to conclude that this impact is much lower than that of a newspaper.
People who live in coal-fired houses?
Dear Anonymous:
Thank you for taking the time to share you thoughts.
The Institute for Sustainable Communication is a non-profit with a mission to raise awareness and build capacity for the sustainable use of print AND digital media. Our mission is constructive and our approach is inclusive. As such, if a publisher, a paper company, an information technology company, a digital media company, a utility that burns coal… or even an anonymous donor… wishes to provide generous assistance to help us fulfill our mission we accept their support without prejudice or undue influence.
The point of the article that you clearly missed is that one DOES need explicit evidence to conclude that the impact of digital media is much lower than that of a newspaper. Evidence that is in short supply, and and too often misused. Your blithe references to the scope 1 and scope 2 emissions of IBM and International paper are perfect examples of "cherry picking" data in attempt to provide some semblance of credibility to a baseless argument.
Am I to take it that you do not consider the deforestation, water pollution, biodiversity loss and social impacts caused by mountaintop removal coal mining to be a problem? Perhaps you live "off grid", or live in one of those rare zipcodes that does not run on electrons produced through the combustion of coal with a mountain top removal origin.
The article does not imply, nor does it state that servers burn coal. However, according to the US Department of Energy, data centers and servers in the US consume in excess of 60 billion kilowatt hours of electricity per year, the majority of which is based on coal that can be traced to mountain top removal mining… a major cause of deforestation, biodiversity loss, and the pollution of over 1,500 miles of headwater streams in the United States.
The article presents evidence that digital media choices can have significant unintended environmental consequences. It challenges all consumers… even anonymous ones, to look beyond the rhetoric to the less obvious environmental aspects and impacts of BOTH print and digital media so they can make informed decisions.
Better access to facts about the environmental impacts associated with our choices is essential. In a world where decisions based on rhetoric rather than facts can have profoundly negative and potentially irreversible unintended consequences we cannot afford to be swayed by purely emotional appeals, simplistic slogans, cherry picked facts, half-truths or catchy tag lines.
Reference to DOE data on
Reference to DOE data on energy use by datacenters is meaningless without corresponding statistics on the energy use by paper & pulp production facilities, printing and distribution services. It would also be helpful to provide measurable data for comparison of water footprint and toxic emissions. Otherwise, it is indeed simple rhetoric and "cherry picking".
I never thought anyone could make this argument work...
... and this one didn't.
This article is going too far back to make it's point. Unfortunately, computers are necessary and even worse, computers are used and required by most people everyday. For reading documents, emails, web content etc. The whole point of encouraging people not to print an email or doc is the "additional" or redundant printing of a document that is already on your computer or server.
It might make more sense to encourage people to chuck their computers and power down the network before you can make a convincing argument that I should not print out an email just so I can take it into the bathroom and read it.
It's much simpler than digital media vs. paperless
I agree with the previous statement that computers and digital communication are at this point a necessity in school, business, etc. Because of this, it's not a decision between the adverse energy effects of digital media and paperless operations, but it becomes simply a decision between storing the information on the computer or printing it out to store a hard copy. For the average person (who probably has no control over where his/her power comes from), it is a matter of making the right decision to store something in 'My Documents' as opposed to wasting paper and ink by printing it out. Additionally, technology is improving to allow all digital media users to use, store, and communicate more information more efficiently.
Simple Choices vs. Simplistic Choices
Thank you for your comment:
What you and others appear to be missing is the need to question the unintended negative outcomes associated with such seemingly "simple" choices as choosing not to use paper and printing based on the uninformed presumption that it will save trees or that it will be be categorically better for the environment if we shift all of our information and communication needs to digital media.
You also seem to share the impression that I believe printing and the use of paper are always the most effective and environmentally preferable choice of media.
Let me be clear: Sustainable print AND digital media are essential.
Business, government, society at large and individuals need the information, insight and ability to communicate that digital information technology AND print can provide. However we also need the economic value, environmental services, beauty and social benefits that sustainable print AND digital media supply chains can provide.
We are not faced with a simple choice. We are faced the challenge to see beyond the use of rhetorical arguments that force a choice between print and digital media without presenting credible evidence for the choice, and without considering the unintended consequences of simplistic choices.
All too often, when it comes to of paper and prints, we are presented with emotionally charged appeals that present false dilemmas or forced choices that fail to identify the true consequences associated with their widespread adoption.
This article neither states nor implies that digital media communication media and digital information technology are inferior to print media, or that paper and print media are categorically greener. On the contrary, the article argues that consumers should challenge the green marketing claims of both print AND digital media.
additional perspective
When we get an email that prompts us to consider the impact before printing, remember that the energy and other impacts have already taken place to bring the digital content to our in box. To then turn our printer on and print out the material, is a net additional negative impact, any way you look at it. Conversely, because it came via email or web browsing, that meant we didn't spend the money and carbon impact of snail mail delivery.
Perspective vs. Point of View
Thank you for your comment. From my point of view it is short sighted to categorically define turning on a printer, printing or using snail mail as "net additional negative" impacts. Also, you may be failing to see opportunities that you have to directly or indirectly reduce the negative environmental impacts associated with your use of digital information technology.
There are times when sending a hand written note by snail mail or issuing a printed document remain the most effective and appropriate ways to communicate. Would you like your college diploma as a PDF file? Is a sympathy
email the way you express condolences?
There are choices you can make about the environmental footprint of the devices you buy and the sources of the energy you employ. Over 90% of all email is spam and recent analysis by McAfee and ICF consulting determined that the energy consumed in transmitting and deleting spam is equivalent to the electricity used in 2.4 million U.S. homes, with greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions equivalent to 3.1 million passenger cars. Do you take steps to report spammers to the FTC?
You might like to consider this perspective for your email signature line:
“All forms of communication use energy and materials. Please consider the lifecycle impacts that creating, storing, copying, sending, printing or disposing of this message may have on the economy, the environment and society. Our common future depends on making sustainable communication choices."
Also, the next time someone tells you that their print or digital solution is "green" you might ask them if they have an Environmental Product Declaration (EPD) or a Lifecycle Analysis for it. And, if they say their solution saves or plants trees ask them if they know what “tree wash” is, and tell them to show you where the trees are on Google Earth.
Nothing at face value
I agree that we need to look at all the effects of a decision like paper vs. print, but this article seems to just look at the lesser-seen negatives of digital media. I know this study is a bit dated now, but Arpad Horvath at UC Berkley looked at lifecycle impacts of this dilema in 2004. I couldn't find a link to the paper itself, but here is a summary: http://coe.berkeley.edu/labnotes/0904/horvath.html
The Greenpeace cloud computing study does not sufficiently account for technological advances and energy saved in local storage, I believe more needs to be done to examine the true future of cloud computing's energy changes.
This article talks about using tree-killing guilt and playing on emotions, then uses lines like "...explosives up to 100 times as strong as ones that tore open the Oklahoma City Federal building..." That line is unacceptable in journalism. Besides ignoring the obvious differences in the physics of those situations, it immediately puts an enourmously negative event in the reader's mind in association with digital media. Terrorism and mining are NOT comparable.
Perception is Reality
You are correct to conclude that the article focuses on the significant yet lesser seen environmental impacts of digital media supply chains, and about the need for more research, analysis and informed decisions regarding the risks, energy requirements and environmental impacts associated with increased reliance on cloud computing.
The need for standards-based comparative lifecycle data for print and digital media is the essential to making informed decisions. However, despite the efforts of Arpad Horvath and others, such data is in short supply and all to seldom used appropriately. All too often proponents of digital media employ emotionally charged rhetoric about how paper and print media kills trees that is "supported" by questionable anecdotal evidence or "cherry picked" lifecycle data.
The whitepaper "False Dilemmas and Forced Choices" (http://bit.ly/aMMrY0) on ISC's website addresses this and other issues in greater detail.
What you seem to have missed is my assertion that we need BOTH print and digital media and that we need BOTH to become radically more sustainable than either is today. Just as it would be irresponsible to rely on any one crop to feed our families, it would also be irresponsible to rely solely on either print or digital media today.
When we use digital media we need to consider the purchased energy, embodied energy, dark data and e-waste entailed even though they are invisible or out of sight. Likewise, when we use paper and print media we need to consider the sources and flows of raw materials and energy that these products use.
Print and digital media both have positive and negative impacts on the environment. For that reason it is important for consumers and watchdog groups to be critical of vague or unsubstantiated claims and demand greater availability, accuracy and comparability of “lifecycle data” about print and digital media. Consumers can feel good about their media choices if they are armed with the facts, rather than being persuaded to feel guilty or hypocritical for not using digital media.
You are entitled to your opinions regarding the acceptable use of emotionally charged references in journalism, however, you may not be aware that the long history of reckless disregard, conflict and violence associated with the coal industry IS seen by some as the moral equivalent of terrorism. In fact, the grassroots environmental justice group Mountain Justice is the original source of the reference to the explosives employed in Oklahoma City Federal building blast. They provide numerous references to the violence of coal mining and the following statement about the amount of explosives employed by the mining industry:
"According to the Institute of Makers of Explosives, the coal industry consumed 67 percent of the explosives purchased nationwide in 2003, the most recent year for which information is available. West Virginia consumed 332,000 metric tons — more than any other state. If mines blast about 250 days a year, that works out to about three million pounds of explosives used in West Virginia each day. That is equivalent to 4,636 “bunker buster” bombs, each of which contains 647 explosive pounds." (http://www.mountainjustice.org/facts/property.php)
One of the more significant direct causes of deforestation in the United States is Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining in the states of West Virginia, Kentucky and North Carolina. Consumers are correct to feel concerned about the environment, and they should be concerned about deforestation. However, it is misleading to imply that all of the world’s forests are in danger, or that papermaking and printing are primary causes of deforestation or environmental degradation. In fact, healthy demand for paper and printing from sources certified as sustainable play an important role in preventing land use change that would otherwise results in deforestation. Mountaintop removal coal mining does not conserve our forests, but sustainable forestry does.
There will always be a need for rhetoric and the use of emotionally compelling imagery to engage the public to address such substantive issues, however, going forward hopefully we will need less rhetoric and there will be more credible evidence and verified facts about the lifecycle impacts of print and digital media supply chains backing it up.