If you take a quick look around any corporate office today, it won't be long before you get the sense of just how quickly paper is becoming a relic in specific areas thanks to a mosaic of technological gadgets.
Computers, laptops, minis, and pda's were some of the first tamers of the 'paper tiger'. Mobile communications has charged onto the scene causing even more elimination of paper, especially of the personal nature. And now, a whole new generation of slate/tablet devices and e-readers are taking us places we have never gone before in a less paper world.
However, just how 'green' is all this electronic wizardry?
Last month in the New York Times, Daniel Goleman and Gregory Norris tackled this question in an op-ed piece published in the April 4, 2010, edition. It was entitled, 'How Green is My iPad?' The article took a long, hard look at the environmental friendliness of e-readers as compared to an old-fashioned book. To do the comparison they used a process referred to as Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
The American Center for Life Cycle Assessment's mission is to increase awareness of and to promote the adoption of Environmental LCA among industry, government, and NGOs. Environmental LCA is a comprehensive yardstick of the environmental performance of goods and services. As such, it can be a powerful tool to influence human behavior and environmental outcomes through management and engineering decisions, public policy and purchasing decisions.
The University of Bolton has compiled an online course in Life Cycle Thinking. In it they include the following figure and details about the 5 distinct phases of a product throughout its useful life.
Figure 1: The life cycle of a product (Souce: University of Bolton)
"The product life cycle in Figure 1 is shown in five distinct phases, all of which interact with the environment. For most products, the period of use is far longer than the other periods, and there may also be periods of storage and non-use between the stages shown. Usually, but not always, these stages will be environmentally benign.
Figure 1 also shows, as feedback loops, the potential for recycling, remanufacturing, and reuse. We will be saying more about these later, but it is worth making the obvious point that reuse is the strategy that potentially has the lowest environmental impact, merely based on the fact that this involves fewer processes, and each stage absorbs energy and has an environmental impact." Life Cycle Thinking http://www.ami.ac.uk/courses/topics/0109_lct/
LCA became popular in the early 1990s and has matured into a sophisticated business model. California's Environmentally Preferable Purchasing Task Force now uses LCA to offer an Environment + Price + Performance program designed to provide state agencies with information and assistance regarding environmentally preferable purchasing (EPP).
EPP is the procurement of goods and services that have a reduced effect on human health and the environment when compared with competing goods and services. This comparison takes into account the "cradle to grave" or "cradle to cradle" life cycle of a product -- from the acquisition of raw materials, processing, manufacturing, packaging, distribution, reuse, maintenance, disposal, energy efficiency, product performance, safety, and cost.
So, what about Goleman & Norris' analysis of e-readers? How did they stack up to an old-fashioned book? Which was more environmentally friendly?
Their conclusion, with respect to fossil fuels, water use and mineral consumption, is the impact of one e-reader payback equals roughly 40 to 50 books. When it comes to global warming, though, it’s 100 books; with human health consequences, it’s somewhere in between. Click here, to read the entire analysis.
Want to learn more about the LCA of a specific product? Visit the online IDC Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Calculator that provides a simple way to assess the environmental impact of a product by calculating its energy input and carbon output from cradle to grave. It is a free, easy-to-use tool to estimate the carbon footprint and embodied energy of any product.
