Paper or pixel? Environmental impact

Paper or pixel?

Paper has gotten a bad rap in recent years. Detractors claim paper manufacturing leads to mass deforestation and contributes significantly to greenhouse gas emissions. While paper supply chains could certainly use an overhaul, some of the arguments against using paper are just plain wrong.

"What people often don't realize is that the paper-making process is sustainable, and claims to the contrary are misleading to the consumer," said Mark Pitts , executive director of printing-writing, at the American Forest And Paper Association (AFANDPA).
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According to the organisation, more than 65% of paper in the US was recycled in 2012, making paper the nation's most recyclable commodity. Over the past century, forest coverage in the northern part of the country, from Minnesota to Maine, has actually increased by 28% according to the United States Department of Agriculture's Forest Service.

On the surface, digital media does appear more sustainable. Electronic products such as phones and laptops are used over an over again, making it a renewable resource of sorts. But manufacturing electronic products also leaves a carbon footprint, as well as the energy needed to power them. And a growing concern is the rapid growth of discarded electronics, especially in developing countries.

E-waste is on the rise, with a global increase of 40m tons per year, especially in third world countries like India and South Africa, according to a 2009 United Nations report.

A lack of concrete information

For companies to assert that paperless is better for the environment, research is needed to back these claims, but there isn't much literature available comparing paper and e-media. One of the main reasons for this is that the two commodities are so different, and one has been around for far longer than the other.

As one of the oldest forms of communication, paper's life-cycle is easy to track, while e-media is young in relative terms. Companies must prove that they've looked at both and found electronics have a lower impact, Riebel said.

"We have to be careful when we pin one product against the other and say it's better. It's a tricky thing to do if you don't have all the data to back it up."

Paper comes in a variety of forms from many different manufacturers, so there will likely be a number of impacts, not just one that can be generally applied, said Arpad Horvath, a professor of engineering at the University of California-Berkeley.
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More research is needed regarding the footprint of electronics, which means there is no "average environmental footprint" for e-media either, added Horvath, who, in 2004, published a study on the environmental impact of wireless technologies.

Conclusion

From the information researched it is clear that both digital and print based design can be bad for the environment.When thinking about a phone's 'shelf' life it is evident that apple products are often 'made to break' with the phones slowly dying over the two year contract period. This being very similar to the first ever lightbulb in which did not break. (In other words complying to the consumerist society in which we live).