Paper or Digital - Which is greener?

Which is greener? Paper or Digital? Should we get off paper completely or should we reconsider whether to go completely digital? Is one really better than the other?

Other than the cool factor associated with digital gadgets like the ipad, manufacturers have been trying to market the idea of it being a greener technology. But here are some statistics that will make you rethink:

> One pine tree of about 25 mts in height generates (~) 119,000 sheets of A4 sized paper. Every average office worker spends atleast 10,000 sheets of paper a year.

> Compare those numbers to what it takes to produce a digital reader - Making a computer typically requires the mining and refining of dozens of minerals and metals including gold, silver, and palladium as well as extensive use of plastics and hydrocarbon solvents. There is enough gold in digital device to make a lovely band of wedding gold rings. Not to mention the amount of energy spent in mining the rare elements such as Palladium (and the energy spent on building the machinery to the job). Further, the plastics being manufactured for use in the device are not recyclable. To function, digital devices require a constant flow of electrons that predominately come from the combustion of coal. So we're talking CO2 emissions at a much bigger scale in order to manufacture the power required to run the device in the first place. At the end of their all-too-short useful lives (2 - 5 yrs at the very most) electronics have become the single largest stream of toxic waste created by man. Only 30 - 45% of entire device is recyclable and not more than 2% of the population of the world is prepared to recycle their old digital devices. Not to mention the fact that all the material available on the e-readers today is originally taken from printed material; which means felling that many trees and printing the paper and then manufacturing the e-reader to get the material to you and supplying you with the power to run the device. You do the math.

This essentially means, "what an idea sirji" might not be such a good idea after all!

We're in a situation which has no right answers. Both paper and e-readers are very costly to the environment. So unless we can come up with better methods to improve our forever power hungry electronics, revolutionize our manufacturing cycle to spend less un-green energy in order to manufacture 'green technology' and evolve our usage of the natural resources we take so much for granted; no matter which approach we take, we're only headed in a downward spiral.

Biblio:

http://www.secret-life.org/cellphones/cell_environment.php

http://www.springerlink.com/content/95403643m3657g40/

http://www.funtrivia.com/askft/Question69385.html

http://www.paperonweb.com/A1011.htm