How about starting your day today by questioning a previously held “sacred cow” about the environmental sustainability of printing vs. electronic media?
Consider the following questions:
- Is reading emails a “greener” activity than reading printed paper?
- Is the computer industry “greener” than the paper industry?
- Are you helping the environment by getting your news from the internet rather than a daily printed newspaper?
If you answered YES to any or all of these questions, guess what, YOU’RE WRONG!
The ways in which printing and paper are better for the environment, leaving a substantially smaller carbon footprint, are too numerous to mention in this little blog, so here is a good resource to check out for more information: http://tinyurl.com/nc4ahc
But here are a few brief tidbits:
- The paper and forest industry replenishes more than it takes, ensuring the sustainability of forests, and planting more than three times what it harvests, while the life span of the computer is shrinking, causing electronics to currently be the fastest growing item in the waste stream. Remember, computers don’t grow on trees!
- 20% less carbon dioxide is used by someone getting their news from a daily newspaper rather than reading it on the internet for 30 minutes.
- The energy it takes to produce the approximately 440 pounds of paper each person consumes annually runs your computer for just 5 months.
And what does the headline of this blog mean?
About 60% of all paper in the US is recycled, while less than 18% of all electronic devices get new lives when their time runs out.
One final statistic to leave you with today: It costs almost $3 billion dollars per year to leave computers sitting on! In the US the computers left on, but not used, every night produces carbon dioxide equivalent to operating four million cars.
When thinking “green,” make sure you think PAPER, and not just ELECTRONIC! There’s room for both.
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