Is Digital Media Worse for the Environment Than Print?
April 5, 2010

Public opinion polls show that concern about the environment rises and falls based on the state of the economy and other factors, but concern about the negative impacts associated with using paper and printing continues to rise. 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 call to action, as well as others like “Sign up for paperless billing, help the environment and save trees” confront consumers with a false dilemma and present a forced choice that may have unintended consequences. The false dilemma is: “By using paper to print your email or by receiving paper bills you are knowingly degrading the environment, destroying forests and/or killing trees.” The forced choice is: “Eliminate your use of paper or feel like a guilty hypocrite.”
paper mill in wash.jpg

A paper mill in Washington

What’s implied is that digital media is the environmentally preferable choice and that print media is the environmentally destructive choice. But is it possible that digital media could be more destructive to the environment and a greater threat to trees, bees, rivers and forests in the United States than paper-making or printing?

A heightened sense of awareness about the environment has developed in recent years. In particular, feelings of guilt and concern are on the rise about the use of paper and its alleged impact on the fate of our trees, forests and the environment. Are these feelings justified?

The story of sustainable media is a “bad news/good news” story. The bad news is that the public’s concern about our forests and the environment is justified. The good news is that seeing beyond the green rhetoric and rethinking the lifecycle impacts of both print and digital media will play a major role in allowing us to enjoy forests and conserve our environment. more at MEDIASHIFT

he FSC / SFI Sham … or is it?
March 2, 2010

By Sabine Lenz

“This is a sham,” Cynthia was up in arms, “A friend told me that there actually might not be any FSC-certified pulp in the FSC-certified paper that I buy! Then what about recycled pulp and … what is all this talk about auditing and … how can I trust anybody anymore?”

papertipOkay, I never said eco-certification was easy, but Cynthia’s friend definitely didn’t do the best job at explaining the ins and outs. So let me try.

FSC, and SFI for that matter, both certify forests to ensure they are managed in an environmentally and socially responsible manner. Yes, they have differing standards, but I’ll write about this aspect in the coming weeks.

For now, let’s just keep it simple and say this: Both FSC and SFI care deeply about our forests and the environment. Their respective labels provide you and me with the assurance that the paper products we’re purchasing come from forests managed to conserve biodiversity and support local communities.

This is what we all have heard for years now. It is a good and noble cause, and we support it.

Where does the pulp come from?
As we agree on this, we can also agree on the fact that the FSC/SFI pulp has to come from certified forests. The certification of the forest as such is the part you and I can easily understand.

An independent auditor (both SFI and FSC work with third-party auditing companies) goes out to the forest that wants to be certified and makes sure it fulfills all the criteria required by the certification model.

This doesn’t just include visiting the actual forest, but also includes aspects like: making sure the forest workers are skilled; ensuring that no pesticides are used in managing the forest or that no genetically modified trees are planted – the standards are extensive.

Once the trees are ripe (fully grown), they are harvested and brought to a certified pulp mill.

NOTE: There are only around 40 FSC-certified pulp mills in North America producing somewhere between one and three million tons of certified pulp. Some of these mills produce their own paper from this pulp, but many paper mills in North America are non-integrated (meaning they don’t make their own pulp). Non-integrated mills buy their FSC-certified pulp from those certified pulp mills on a contractual or first-come, first-serve basis.

How is the pulp handled?
If we all wanted to buy 100 percent certified papers tomorrow, there just would not be enough pulp available to keep up with the demand. So, the most common logos we see today are those of “mixed sources,” papers that contain a certain percentage of certified pulp. Are you still with me?

The original idea – and a logical one at that – was to ask the mills to ensure that the certified pulp was stored separately from the rest of the mill’s pulp and was used in the papermaking process separately and … But if you have ever been at a paper mill, this poses quite a challenge.

For one, a paper machines run 24/7 (except the yearly downtime for maintenance), so asking a mill to stop and start the machine to make certified paper is an economic impediment.

Volume Sharing
Over the years, in an attempt to make the production of certified papers economically viable, FSC and SFI have adopted a “volume credit” system. A confusing term to be sure. I prefer “average percentage.” Let me explain with an example.

A mill produces 100 tons of paper a year. It buys 10 percent of the pulp needed from a certified pulp mill. In order to not have to interrupt its workflow, the mill and certifying body agree that this 10 percent can be called out on specific paper lines the mill produces. In our case, theoretically 100 percent of the mill’s paper could be called out as 10 percent FSC /SFI certified.

So far this all makes sense right?

Let’s take it one step further and say the mill wants to offer a specific paper line with a higher certified percentage to its customers – Brand XYZ is 20 percent certified. Now the mill can only label 50 percent of the papers it produces as 20 percent certified.

The Audit
The certifying body keeps a close eye on its mill clients and conducts yearly audits, which include lots of paperwork including checking invoices for certified pulp received to ensure that a mill doesn’t market or claim to have more certified papers than the percentage of certified pulp that it purchased allows it to claim.

This again is to assure you and me that we get what we pay for.

Does this mean that theoretically the specific paper you and I buy does not contain the full 30 percent FSC / SFI pulp it claims? Sorry, but yes.

And by the way, the same “average percentage” principle applies to the recycled content claims made by pulp and/or paper manufacturers.

The bottom line is that we are “paying” for the overall efforts a mill makes to be sustainable and offer certified papers, thus providing our forest managers the incentive to certify, while staying economically viable.

——

Seeing designers worldwide struggle to stay current with new papers and paper trends inspired Sabine Lenz to create PaperSpecs, an independent and comprehensive Web-based paper selection tool and weekly e-newsletter. Growing up in Germany, she started her design career in Frankfurt, before moving on to Australia and the United States. Lenz worked on design projects ranging from corporate identities to major road shows and product launches. From start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, her list of clients included Oracle, Sun Microsystems, Deutsche Bank, IBM and KPMG. Lenz is a noted speaker and author on paper issues and educational topics related to the paper industry.

This article was quoted from: http://www.paperspecs.com/mainblog/the-fsc-sfi-sham-or-is-it/

We have investigated becoming FSC certified and discovered that it costs somewhere between $3000 - $5000 per year and its in our humble opinon just a bookeeping expense. We feel that our enviornmental track record speaks for it self and while we cannot put the FSC logo on your printing if you ask for an FSC certified paper we can certainly purchase it, print on it, and thats the truth! And if you can't trust your printer . . . who can you trust?

Print Pays Off - from International Paper

According to the latest research on advertising, printed communications are making a significant contribution to the economy and have a positive impact on business. Statistics show the following:

• Campaigns combining direct mail and internet yield up to an additional 25 percent response rate.
• Nearly 80 percent of households either read or scan advertising mail sent to their household.
• Direct mail give advertisers a whopping 13-1 return on their investment.
• Nearly 80 percent of internet users surveyed said they were directly influenced to purchase an item or service because of a direct mail.
• Brand recall is substantially higher using print vs. onscreen. On-screen information is 20 to 30 percent more difficult to read.
• Small and medium businesses still rely on newspaper and magazine articles (43.6 percent) and direct mail, including letters, postcards and catalogs (3.5 percent) to get results.

All this and more from: International Paper
click on the downloadable link for "Down To Earth" Is it worth printing?

From GreenCitizen.com . . . more reasons print is greener than ebooks

GLOBAL E-WASTE CRISIS CAUSED BY
IMPROPER COMPUTER & ELECTRONIC RECYCLING

DID YOU KNOW?

* Every year, an estimated 400 million units of obsolete electronics are scrapped.
* By 2010, this figure will rise to three billion units.

While advances in technology continue to improve and enrich our lives, product lifecycles are getting shorter and shorter. And that means an increasing stockpile of end-of-life equipment that needs to be managed. When discarded, much of this equipment ends up in landfills in the US, or is exported to third world countries.

* An average of 220 tons of e-waste is dumped in landfills and incinerators every year in the US alone. These toxic items constitute as much as 2-5% of the US municipal solid waste stream and continues to grow rapidly.
* As much as 50 to 80 percent of US electronic waste collected for recycling is sent to Asia.

Electronic equipment contains harmful toxins which, when released into the environment, can contaminate our water, land and air. Lead, mercury, cadmium and flame retardants are all persistent, bioaccumulative toxins (PBTs) that cause birth defects and damage to coronary, respiratory, nervous and skeletal systems.

* A single computer or television monitor contains an average of 4 to 8 pounds of lead. Monitor glass contains about 20% lead by weight. When this glass is crushed in a landfill, the lead leaches into the soil.
* Just 1/70 of a teaspoon of mercury is enough to contaminate 20 acres of a lake, rendering the fish inedible.
* In the US, municipal incineration of e-waste is the largest source of cancer-producing dioxin and among the largest point source of heavy metal contaminations in the atmosphere.

While there are many ways to dispose of unwanted electronics, there are few guarantees that the resulting e-waste will be disposed of responsibly.

GreenCitizen is working to change that.

GreenCitizen helps individuals and organizations recycle their electronics responsibly. We provide convenient, affordable and responsible solutions that make it easy for everyone to do their part to help save the environment from harmful electronic waste.

Will the Kindle kill printing . . .

(CNN) -- When Dan Brown's blockbuster novel "The Lost Symbol" hit stores in September, it may have offered a peek at the future of bookselling.

On Amazon.com, the book sold more digital copies for the Kindle e-reader in its first few days than hardback editions. This was seen as something of a paradigm shift in the publishing industry, but it also may have come at a cost.

Less than 24 hours after its release, pirated digital copies of the novel were found on file-sharing sites such as Rapidshare and BitTorrent. Within days, it had been downloaded for free more than 100,000 times.

Digital piracy, long confined to music and movies, is spreading to books. And as electronic reading devices such as Amazon's Kindle, the Sony Reader, Barnes & Noble's Nook, smartphones and Apple's much-anticipated "tablet" boost demand for e-books, experts say the problem may only get worse.

"It's fair to say that piracy of e-books is exploding," said Albert Greco, an industry expert and professor of marketing at Fordham University.

For the rest of the story . . . .

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/01/01/ebook.piracy/index.html

Letter to the Industry: “Don’t Print” isn’t “Going Green”

By Gail Nickel-Kailing on February 2nd, 2009

Charlie CorrAn Open Letter to the Industry, from Charlie Corr, Chief Strategist, Mimeo.com

It is increasingly popular to bash the use of paper. The industry is an easy target as everyone uses paper and the presentation of the industry is laughable (think Dunder Mifflin on The Office).

Despite the many environmentally friendly actions taken by the paper, printing and publishing industries, little is known of these efforts due to a self-inflicted inability to publicize them. Unlike the auto or fuel industries, we don’t spend any money as an industry on effective green promotion.

Think about it, paper primarily comes from trees. Trees are a renewable resource. They come from farms. You don’t see people bashing farmers, why paper? Trees improve the environment by moderating climate, improving air quality, conserving water, and harboring wildlife. According to the Department of Agriculture, one acre of forest absorbs six tons of carbon dioxide and puts out four tons of oxygen. This is enough to meet the annual needs of 18 people. more

Print on Paper Needs No Apology . . .

ggggggggggggggg g g g g g g gggggggggggg by Noel Jeffrey

The Do Not Mail advisory that passed in San Francisco last March is only one indication of the environmental misperceptions regarding print. People, especially consumers, really believe that they are saving trees and consequently the planet when they choose electronic forms of communication. Industry guru Frank Romano’s Earth Day video this year, appearing on Whattheythink.com, addressed this foolishness. “We are trying to replace paper with electronic forms of communication,” Romano says. “Eliminating paper is not green. I’m sorry, the world is not going to be any better off…Electricity comes from a plant somewhere and in order to get electricity, you have to burn something, usually coal. That’s what goes into the atmosphere…Why are they picking on the printing industry? It’s one of the most responsible industries…There is a cost for all of the electronics. We grow trees and we can plant more trees. We need to show that printing is one of the most sustainable and environmentally conscious industries.” To this end, The Print Council (www.theprintcouncil.org) released a position paper titled Why Print is Green at this year’s Print 09 trade show. The report is intended for use by printers and designers to demonstrate to their customers why print media is the environmentally sound choice for communicating with the audiences they want to reach. “Our industry is a leader in recycling, sustainability and pollution control,” says Ben Cooper, Executive Director of The Print Council. “In fact we pioneered putting those concepts into widespread practice over the past three decades. But we did so quietly, to the extent that there is a lack of awareness regarding the environmentally responsible nature of print. That’s why we created and will be distributing this new position paper.” Why Print Is Green describes ten specific ways in which print is green — from the responsible products used, renewable energy sourced, increased recycling rates, improved design and delivery methods. There are still more eye-openers available in the International Paper’s Publication, Pixels vs. Paper, available as a free download on the company’s website. Go to Sustainability tab and select Education. Consider these astounding figures. • 20% Less CO2 is used per year by a person reading a daily printed newspaper versus a person reading Web-based news for 30 minutes a day. • On average it takes 500 kilowatt-hours of electricity to produce 440 pounds of paper, the typical amount of paper each individual uses in a year. That’s the equivalent of powering one computer continuously for five months. • It costs an estimated $2.8 billion of energy to leave computers sitting idly overnight in the U.S. On a CO2 basis, that’s an amount equivalent to four million cars on the road. IP writes, “The paper industry has had much more time to figure out how to be sustainable and responsible. In time, the electronics industry will do the same. But, until then, paper and printed communications have the upper hand when it comes to being sustainable. And while a balance is required between the two for effective communication, it is important to keep the above facts in mind when finding that balance.

Moving Forward . . .

“The fact is, both print and digital media must become increasingly more sustainable to survive, and the choices we make should be based on a data-driven comparative analysis of lifecycle, carbon footprint and total environmental impact. The paper and forest products industry has been addressing sustainability for decades, and now adheres to many third-party certification standards and government regulations. We’ve made great progress and have a true environmental story to tell. As more scientific data-driven tools are developed, evaluations based on inputs and outputs will become more balanced.”

Whats Greener . . . Print or Pixels . .

An interesting discussion about print vs. electronic media and their impact on the environment.
http://deadtreeedition.blogspot.com/2009/07/smackdown-printed-editions-vs-digital.html