In todays three minute Ad Age they reported from yesterdays Annual Advertising Age green conferance and the question asked there was What's the carbon footprint of a banner ad? - Don Carli also compares the electricity 'waste' of the paper making industry to the electronic communications (servers and whatnot) and finds that the "Don't print this email" campaigns is barking up the wrong tree, sortof. Oh c'mon I had to get a tree pun in here!
Papermaking, in the united states, consumed 75 billion kilowatt hours of electricity in 2006. That's the second largest industrial use of electricity.
During the same period of time, people have been saying "Don't print this email"..send it electic, don't print it send it electronically, save trees.
Just data centers and servers in North America, according to the energy information administration, consumed 61 billion kilowatt hours of electricity, and they're growing at a prodigious rate."
Dum dum DUM!
Point being, being green isn't only about saving paper. - which strikes me as such a late eighties way of looking at the environmental problems we have today, what rock have people been hiding under? Yes, I know I've said that before in "Please consider the environment before printing this e-mail.".