Is it better for the environment to read your newspaper online?
When I finish reading my Sunday newspaper, I can’t help but think I’ve just committed an egregious environmental sin—all those poor trees that had to die so I could titter over inane op-eds, guacamole recipes, and overpriced real estate listings! The greener choice would be to read the paper online, correct?
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The environmental costs of paper are easy to assess: As you point out, a whole bunch of trees get chopped down in order to provide your Sunday morning entertainment. Manufacturing 1 ton of newsprint, which is enough to create approximately 280,000 broadsheet pages, requires the contents of 12 mature trees. So let’s say your weekly indulgence is the Sunday edition of the Minneapolis Star Tribune, which averages 172 pages and has a circulation of 606,698. Those numbers translate into 4,472 trees’ worth of paper every week, or 232,544 trees per year.
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Paper may be an energy hog, but so, too, are the servers and desktops that make online newspapers possible. Researchers from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have estimated that the average server consumes 4,505 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, a figure that includes the power used to cool the hardware.
Soooooo… doing some quick engineering figures… I get about 60 million btu’s needed to power that server for a year, or about 3 cords of pine, which converts to about 6 trees…
So… 232,544 trees vs 6 trees. It looks like tree consumption might be a wash.
However, I bet a newspaper would need at LEAST 2 or 3 modern servers for a 600k circulation daily. So I will have to look at the math again to see if they are equivalent.
Pulp trees are cultivated. This is by no means a natural forest, but it is a renewable resource. There’s the economics to consider. What of the displaced workers in the paper pulp industry? Like many US manufacturers they have already taken some big hits. Economics will eventually drive energy and resource conservation. That’s why many environmentalist wants to see gasoline prices over $5.00 per gallon. Most people aren’t going to change until they feel the pain.
#2,
Looking at the financial statements of the oil companies the last few years, I bet the oil companies want $5 a gallon gasoline even more than environmentalists.
Newspaper? Oh yeah my grandfather drove one.
After you read your paper tear it into strips and use it the next time you take a dump to wipe your butt. After that throw the poop and paper into your high flux air producing compost pile and close the lid. Monitor the gas production and use accordingly.
Considering how biased and agenda-driven the leftist newspapers are, I believe a better headline would be:
“Will Canceling Your Newspaper Subscription Help You Gain A Better Understanding Of The News?”
I think this misses the point.
1) I read online “news” only when I have the time either in the office or at home. I read the paper and/or a magazine while on the toilet and taking mass transit. I don’t think shelling out $400 for a Kindle or lugging around my laptop trying to get a WiFi signal on the train is worth the effort. Plus, I stare at a computer all day for work and find reading a newspaper or magazine far less harsh.
2) Paper used in newsprint usually comes from recycled materials, and on the flipside gets recycled after its read. So we aren’t actually chopping down hundreds of thousands of trees to distribute said paper for a year. It is only the “equivalent” to that many.
3) The true cost and environmental savings to me would be infrastructure of digital media versus shipping logs/paper/recyclables/printed media/etc back and forth. It isn’t so much that we’re saving the trees, its the shipping of the recycling and raw trees that is only only environmentally expensive but also financially expensive especially as the cost of fuel goes up.
Newspapers burn better than the Internet.
# 6 jbenson2 said, Considering how biased and agenda-driven the leftist newspapers are,
Are you on the right still using the line of BS?
Even after we learned that the supposedly uber-liberal New York Times was nothing more than a stenographer for the White House in the lead up to the Iraq war?
You on the right seriously needs some new script writers. You’re worn out.
I’ve always hated the Sunday paper. Generally, I love reading newspapers. I read most of my news online, but I still like to go down to the coffeeshop with a paper, not a laptop. However, it’s always bugged me how the Sunday paper is three times the size – and cost – of the dailies. Most of the extra bulk is advertisements, so I end up paying extra money for more ads. So as much as like reading a physical paper, I’ll stick to the ‘net on Sundays.
#8 said: Even after we learned that the supposedly uber-liberal New York Times was nothing more than a stenographer for the White House in the lead up to the Iraq war?
I guess your comment just helps to reconfirm Uncle Dave’s newspaper subscription cancellation idea. Why waste your money on faux news? If you want to be brain-washed, read it online and support the environmentalists along the way.
I have never had a subscription to a newspaper. In fact, I have more online paid subscriptions (Netflix, Audible) than off line subscriptions (1 magazine).
So… Is this a good time to bring up the beneficial commercial advantages of hemp?
Pulpwood is a renewable crop. Pulpwood is a managed crop, as opposed to trees cut for construction lumber, furniture and baseball bats.
Wanting to save those trees by reducing paper consumption is like wanting to save wheat by recommending that everybody reduce bread consumption.
I don’t subscribe to newspapers anymore since I bougth the Kindle. But very few newspapers and magazines are available on the Kindle. Even fewer have pictures and full editions yet still charge almost full price for them.
The Kindle was a nice idea, but it’s too expensive for what content it has. By the time the content catches up, they’ll have Version 2 or 3 out for another 400 bucks. So the first kindle, not exactly worth the 400 bucks.
But I do like it, but for most people, it’s useless because there are no newspapers. And great, tell the younger generation to watch more news on youtube about celebrities and pedophiles and forget about newspapers. Wonder why people grow up knowing very little besides what their buddie is twittering.
I think with all the chemicals from circuit boards coming into the news as pollution, there are negatives to both sides. I will say that the paper companies in general buy up large tracks of woodland, harvest it, and maintain it so that “old tree growth” is removed, and new young trees are continually planted by the millions each year. They can do this because (1) they have income from the cutting down and usage of trees, (2) it is in their best business interests that every inch of land they can buy is planted with trees, new trees, healthy trees.
There are two kinds of forests, those who are not managed, and the trees grow big with a lot of dead undergrowth (big trees rob the sunlight from everything under them), and managed forests where this undergrowth is burnt (yep), and the nutrients from burning serve to fertilize the rest of this growth. Which do you want, methane gas making holes in the ozone layer because this is decaying? or burning which produces CO2 and not methane?
Get real people. These people who make a lot of whoop over cutting trees don’t know what they are talking about.
#17 – Canceled mine years ago.
We know.
No one as uninformed as you has a newspaper subscription.