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08 Jun 2017

Is paper or paperless better for the environment?

Vaughan Patterson Product Marketing Operations Manager for Production Print
Production Printing Services

Digital sips energy but paper’s benefits filter into more of the supply chain

On the one hand some people claim that using paper is bad for the environment. But in our industry, and others related to it, some companies claim that the paperless office is a destination worthy of the journey. Computers, digital screens, and mobile computing, they say, are the Holy Grail for all office workers.

But is that really true?

If you delve beneath the surface of that argument you may find that paper isn’t the source of environmental destruction that some people claim it to be nor is digital the remedial panacea wrought by bunny-hating industrialists.

Some people claim that forests, and some even say rainforests, are being destroyed so office workers can leave unread documents in the printer’s out tray. It’s driving us toward the paperless office and a paperless society. But forestry businesses can’t indefinitely go on destroying forests because they’ll run out of trees and that means running out of their raw product. They have to maintain future raw product supplies.

Perhaps unscrupulous industrialists are rampant and why not also in forestry? Reputable foresters in today’s regulated world ensure their product carries the proper certifications – typically that means Forestry Stewardship Council (FSC) certification, which is a non-profit that audits tree felling among other things to ensure it comes from responsibly managed forests. We consumers, at the office or home, can choose to buy FSC-certified paper. And these responsible forestry operations also plant many new trees, which is good for the air we breathe.

But let’s consider the alternative to paper. According to the digerati and possibly even a hipster or five, all good, sustainable, green offices aspire to computer-powered screens because they’re clean and green. But screens come at a cost. Just as paper must be manufactured, all the way from felling trees, processing them through mills, creating paper, shipping it all over the world and so on, screens must also be created, as well as the cases, processors, memory, storage, circuitry and more that powers them. The supply chain for these devices, including smartphones, tablets, laptops, and desktops besides a bunch of other types, uses more energy than paper and produces more carbon emissions – during manufacturing and shipping. But what about after that? Paper often gets used once before it goes back into the recycle stream so you have to manufacture many more individual sheets even though many go back to recycling.

Electronic devices get reused a lot. We hardly view one document on an iPad Pro then toss it in the bin. But consider then the energy required to view documents on screens – all the way from manufacturing to eventual recycling.

Lithium-ion batteries have made rechargeable devices pretty energy efficient. Tablets and smartphones typically provide enough charge for a full day’s operations by one user. An iPhone battery carries roughly 1440mAh of charge when it’s new; the number gradually diminishes throughout the lifespan of the device as the battery degrades a fraction each time it charges. Still, you can depend on at least 300 to 500 recharges before the battery only provides a half charge compared to new.

So what does that mean for the environment? In South Africa you probably charge your phone from Eskom-generated power. That means coal power. Coal power is dirty. Eskom’s website reckons it generates around 34000 megawatts of power. Many 2014-era smartphones (representing the majority of current devices actually in use) use roughly 1kWh per year. So Eskom can keep 34 million iPhones charged for a whole year using just one hour of its electricity output. Give or take – I don’t carry a pocket protector. Essentially it takes very little coal burning electricity generation to charge smartphones.

However, sticking with iPhones (because we love them so much and they explode less frequently than another brand) the iPhone 6 reportedly created 95kg of CO2 during its lifespan and 85% of that during manufacturing so 80,75kg of CO2 to manufacture. Only 11% of that total goes to actual usage so 10,45kg of CO2 – a comparatively pedestrian number. Most of the carbon is emitted during manufacturing so while the digerati and those one to five hipsters may be right that its better to use digital screens to view documents their estimation likely discounts the fact that it costs the environment a fair bit to manufacture the devices in the first place and ship them worldwide.

Nor do they likely consider the mounting effects of e-waste. By far the vast majority of e-waste gets trashed, not recycled. Just 11% of mobile devices were recycled in 2010. However, the numbers were gradually improving from 2000 to 2010. In the US in 2000 just 10% of e-waste was recycled. But by 2012 that increased to more than 29%. Still, that one country sent more than 2,4 million tons of e-waste to landfill in 2012, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

But, while recycling e-waste has generally seen an uptick, recycling tablets and mobile smart devices is reportedly becoming increasingly difficult. The devices are manufactured to be as thin and light as possible. Glue offers the best way to join and attach the many bits of smart, mobile devices but it’s reasonably difficult to separate after the useful lifespan of the device. Screws make it easier for repairs but also lengthen and make the recycle process more difficult. Plastic clips are the easiest to recycle but don’t make for robust devices hence their disaffection with manufacturers.

The upshot of increasingly popular smart, mobile devices, the difficulties in recycling them, and the craze by many to have the latest and greatest, is that e-waste increased 63% between 2010 and 2015, according to the United Nations University in Japan, the academic and research arm of the United Nations.

That paints digital devices in a poorer light but it’s not all rosy beds and bowls of peaches and cream for paper either. A single A4 sheet of paper (many educated estimates roughly agree) requires 122ml of water, 6,8g of CO2, and 0,5g of landfill waste (if you don’t recycle). Making paper produces around 1,36 metric tons (a ton is different from a metric ton: a ton is actually 907,19kg, which is equal to 2 000 pounds) of CO2 per 1 metric ton of paper.

But a lot of paper is recycled, which is a good thing. The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) figures that recycling a ton of paper (907,19kg) saves 17 trees, 7 000 gallons of water, and 463 gallons of oil. In our language that means saving 17 trees, 26 498 litres of water, and 1 753 litres of oil. That’s pretty good. And more paper is actually going to recycling centres instead of landfill these days so that helps too.

So is it better to print than it is to use digital screens or vice versa?

As you’ve by now seen the argument is more complicated than the pundits from both sides will have you believe. The way I see it you’re better off using a screen for documents you’ll only view once and paper for documents you’ll look at many times. How many times exactly? I don’t know. There are too many variables in the calculations to come up with an accurate figure.

But let’s look at this argument from another angle and beyond the plain old office document. While paper has its pros and cons it hasn’t disappeared. The way we use it and view it, though, has changed. Paper is a premium format. An invitation or promotional offer from a company printed on special paper these days is noteworthy. It’s used less often than digital media, it’s more expensive to produce and distribute than digital media, and that makes us feel special when we get it. So we use it less often and we use it to mark special occasions. That’s because digital documents and delivery methods, so quick to create and shoot out, have made the time- consuming process of creating paper-based marketing and other materials so much more valuable.

Paper is more expensive as a communications medium but it’s clearly here to stay as a premium format. And it’s not as bad for the environment as many opposition pundits may have you believe.

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