Conflict of Interest

[Cory Smith]

[BillJ]

It's like the emails I get from the paper companies that say don't print this email.

[Edpat]

This is what the paper companies and printers should end their e-mail with:

Notice: It is OK to print this e-mail. Paper is a biodegradable, renewable, recyclable, sustainable product made from trees. Growing & harvesting trees provides jobs for millions of men and women, & working forest are good for the environment, providing clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. Please recycle your paper.

Now printers and paper companies don't look so bad after all.

[mglouis]

Edpat, That's genius. heh.

[JoeatData]

Agrees with Edpat.

Electronic communication isn't necessarily more Eco-Friendly.
I have a pdf stating some fact, but it's failing on my attempt to attach

[gordo]

Agrees with Edpat.

Electronic communication isn't necessarily more Eco-Friendly.
I have a pdf stating some fact, but it's failing on my attempt to attach

I can quote some info from news reports that you might be referring to:

Say you do a Google search. Your query kicks into action about 1,000 servers at various Google data centres. Those computers scan billions of web pages already in Google’s archives and spit out an answer.
Total time elapsed: 0.2 seconds on average. Meanwhile, Google’s data centres are also constantly combing the Internet to update their archives of web pages.
All those computers have a voracious appetite for energy, especially for cooling equipment to prevent overheating.

The Internet now consumes two to three per cent of the world’s electricity.
If the Internet was a country, it would be the planet’s fifth-biggest consumer of power, ahead of India and Germany. The Internet’s power needs now rival those of the aviation industry and are expected to nearly double by 2020.

Apple’s 46,000-square-metre iDataCenter is set to open in North Carolina this spring and will use an estimated 100 megawatts of power – as much as about 100,000 homes.
Apple’s mega-facility is part of a cluster of gigantic new data centres coming on line in North Carolina that are powered largely by cheap and highly polluting coal power. Google has a 44,000-square-metre data centre in the state that will eventually consume an estimated 60 to 100 MW. Facebook has a 28,000-square-metre facility under construction there that will eat up 40 MW.
The three facilities form “North Carolina’s dirty data triangle” whose power comes from coal, the most polluting of all fossil fuels and the world’s single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

best, gordo

[Mark Flanders]

Growing & harvesting trees provides jobs for millions of men and women, & working forest are good for the environment, providing clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. Please recycle your paper.

Don't get me wrong, I'm pro-print, pro-business and pro-paper but the idea that the logging industry is good for the environment is wishful thinking. It could be, but for the most part it's not. Which is why FSC and recycled stock is important.

[JoeatData]

A couple of fact....following up with what gordo quoted

A study commissioned by the Internet security software company MacAfee estimated spam wastes 33 billion kilowatt-hours annually, with the same greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1 million passenger cars using 2 billion gallons of gasoline, or enough to drive a car around the globe 1.6 million times.

With a reading time of 30 minutes per day the environmental impact of the web based newspaper was in general in the same range as the printed newspaper environmental impact.

[SlaveToTheMan]

This is what the paper companies and printers should end their e-mail with:

Notice: It is OK to print this e-mail. Paper is a biodegradable, renewable, recyclable, sustainable product made from trees. Growing & harvesting trees provides jobs for millions of men and women, & working forest are good for the environment, providing clean air, clean water, wildlife habitat and carbon storage. Please recycle your paper.

Now printers and paper companies don't look so bad after all.

Yeah, a bunch of our sales "people" have that as their sig line on their email, must have come from a Pro Print campaign of some kind.

[gordo]

Don't get me wrong, I'm pro-print, pro-business and pro-paper but the idea that the logging industry is good for the environment is wishful thinking. It could be, but for the most part it's not. Which is why FSC and recycled stock is important.

That's actually a bit of a myth.
The vast majority of trees that are used for making paper come from tree farms. Trees that are specifically grown to make paper. Just like we grow potatoes to make potato chips.
Recycling paper is bad for the environment, it's an expensive, energy consuming, and polluting manufacturing enterprise. Recycling paper does not save trees. The more paper that is made from recycled paper instead of virgin fiber the fewer trees that will be planted. If you want more trees - do not use recycled paper.

best, gordo