The theme for 2010 is 'Many Species. One Planet. One Future.' with a special focus on biodiversity and promoting the green economy.
Why is this in a blog about eBilling, I hear you ask?
Well, if like me, you aren’t attending a rally or a festival on June 5th and haven’t planned to support a community event, then maybe your conscience is looking for a small gesture that can add your voice to the green anthem.
Here’s my suggestion:
- Go to your postbox
- Count the paper bills you receive each month
- Promise yourself that you’ll convert at least 50% of your paper bills to email delivery
If everyone who reads this blog (l’ll smugly say about 100,000 readers) converts 5 paper bills to email, we could save a million sheets of paper every month. That’s 12 million sheets per year.
That’s a lot of paper saved, a lot of trees spared, and a whole heap of energy savings.
World Environment Day is about empowering people to become active agents of sustainable development, and promoting the understanding that communities are pivotal agents of change.
So don’t keep the idea to yourself.
Let’s join up and become the eBilling Community. Let’s be the people that refuse to accept paper bills, and who write persuasive letters to CEO’s of companies that don’t have an electronic billing alternative.
On Saturday, when Prime Ministers and Ministers of Environmental Affairs deliver statements and commit themselves to caring for the Earth, let’s make one simple pledge: No more paper!
It’s much easier than planting a tree and it shouldn’t cost you more than an email or call to your service provider.
Try it. Go paperless! You’ll feel good about your contribution.
Alison Treadaway
Managing Director, Africa
www.striata.com
4 comments:
I'm afraid that this blog is probably well meaning but misguided.
Encouraging customers to get their bills online and also stating that this is better for the environment is increasingly being questioned. In the past two months, faced with being reported to the Advertising Standards Association, (ASA), several very large nationally known UK organisations have stopped similar messages, having accepted they were being made without adequate research, contravening CSR Europe and CAP (Code of Advertising Practice) guidelines.
Whilst the efficiency of electronic communication is clear and initiatives to reduce waste are to be encouraged, the Two Sides organisation, which exists to explore the Myths and Facts concerning the sustainability of Print and Paper, and has members spanning the whole Graphic Communications Value Chain, is concerned that incorrect and damaging impressions are being given if ‘go paperless’ initiatives are promoted as ‘green’ or seek to gain credibility by purporting to aid sustainability at the expense of the print and paper industry.
It is increasingly clear that electronic communication and in particular the energy requirements of the increasing worldwide network of servers which are necessary to store all the information needed for immediate access, has a significant and increasing carbon footprint. Electronic document storage must be recognised as delivering efficiency but not sustainability. In the UK it has been suggested that PC’s and servers may consume up to 50% of the country’s energy requirements in the next 10 years. Greenpeace has reported that electronic waste is the fastest growing waste stream and there are extremely serious disposal costs emerging.
All those who encourage customers to switch to e-billing, or any other form of electronic communication, largely to reduce costs, should re-examine their messages as it is certainly questionable whether e-billing or e-communication has a lower carbon footprint. In fact, with all the environmental costs of electronic communication and with many customers printing out their bills at home for reference, (some studies have put this between 10 an 30 % depending upon whether you are a private or business consumer), at a higher environmental cost than a centrally produced and distributed bill, print and paper may well be the environmentally sustainable way to communicate.
Paper is a renewable and recyclable product that, if responsibly produced and consumed, is an environmentally sustainable media. It is often surprising to learn that in Europe, where 93% of our paper comes from, the area of forest has grown by 30% since 1950 and is increasing at a rate of 1.5 million football pitches every year.
And with 55% of the forest harvest in Europe being consumed for fuel and 34% for construction and other uses, only 11% is actually directly used for making paper.
So, if your organisation is using messages that e-billing, or any other form of electronic communication, is more environmentally friendly than traditional print and paper, please check that you have not only calculated your own savings but also accurately assessed and calculated the downstream consequential costs.
Misleading environmental claims are not only increasingly being examined by regulators but jeopardise the livelihood of the many thousands of people employed in the Graphic Communications Value Chain.
It is encouraging that responsible organisations are now thinking carefully about the statements they make and ensuring that they are not simply repeating old misconceptions.
Martyn Eustace
Two Sides
Martyn,
While your points are valid, the argument about whether paperless billing is better for the environment is not only about sustainable forestation. The original article probably didn't cover ALL of the environmental concerns that paper billing produces purely in the interests of brevity.
You are correct that 55% of the forest harvest in Europe is consumed for fuel and 34% for construction and other uses, and that only 11% is actually directly used for making paper.
However, the concern is that pulp and paper is the third largest industrial polluter to air, water, and land in both Canada and the United States (figures are not readily available for Europe). According to the National Pollutant Release Inventory, the production of paper releases well over 100 million kg of toxic pollution each year in North America.
Worldwide, the pulp and paper industry is the fifth largest consumer of energy, accounting for four percent of all the world's energy use. The pulp and paper industry uses more water to produce a ton of product than any other industry.
According to the 'Reach for Unbleached Foundation', pulp mills are voracious water users. Their consumption of fresh water can seriously harm habitat near mills, reduce water levels necessary for fish, and alter water temperature, a critical environmental factor for fish. Mill owners say they are unable to institute water conservation and recycling because the concentrated effluent would kill fish (British Columbia COFI Pollution Prevention Workshop, June 1997, Environment Canada PPER Consultations, June 2000).
I've only mentioned water pollution, I haven’t even touched on pulping, air pollution and the landfills topped up with the by-product: sludge. We also haven't addressed the environmental costs of distributing all these paper bills by air, rail and road. Clearly the impact on the environment is a heavy one, and one which should not be trivialized.
What we probably can agree on is that our society's demand for information in all forms certainly has had an impact on the environment, whether distributed electronically or on paper. But that is a much bigger topic, probably best left for another day.
The paper industry like any other industry emits greenhouse gases but it is one of the few industries that, by planting new trees, (and remember in Europe forests are now 30% larger than in 1950), and also absorbing CO2, (some say an equal amount), from the air, can aspire to become completely sustainable.
So, in advocating e billing and driving the demand for more servers and pcs, increasing energy consumption, prolonging extraction of fossil fuels, creating new possiblities for gulf like catastrophies, you may be encouraging people to go down a more unsustainable path. (I of course exaggerate the impact here but only in the way the paper industry is similarly maligned).
Yes, the paper mills use water but the cleaning of the water is increasingly rigorous to meet regulations and the water is not lost - it is often reused in increasingly closed loop systems.
Your figures about use of energy are also incorrect with print, pulp and paper, according to the latest World resources Institute figures, http://www.twosides.info/fact.asp?FactID=66, being responsible for 1.1% of worldwide emissions.
So let's get our facts straight and ensure that myths about our industry are not propogated. I'm sure the industry is not blameless but let's get things into proportion. Paper is based on a renewable and recyclable crop. It should be encouraged as a sustainable communications medium.
Good to engage in a complex issue.
Martyn
Martyn,
A complex issue indeed.
Remember that we're not discussing the paper industry alone, but rather print AND postage. You are correct that print, pulp and paper is only responsible for 1.1% of worldwide emissions, but the graphic you referenced also mentions 13.5% from transportation; 5.4% to run and heat commercial buildings; 4.8% from chemicals; 18.4% from deforestation (with a 0.5% credit for reforestation).
Admittedly these figures do not apply only to the distribution of paper documents, but all of these aspects need to be considered when discussing the distribution of paper communications.
The GHG emission figures for only the paper mail distribution industry are not easily available because of the complexities involved, but perhaps a simple way of apportioning the environmental impact would be to look at the individual costs for the various elements involved in paper communication:
- Envelope
- Paper sheets
- Print
- Distribution
Since you're in the UK, you will know that the Royal Mail cost of any direct mail campaign is at least 90% of the total cost of the campaign. Could it be that the transportation contribution to GHG emissions is 90% of the total carbon footprint for paper bill delivery? This is clearly not sustainable, no matter how many forests are re-planted.
Ebilling is about removing ALL of the costs and environmental impacts of traditional paper communication; it's not only about removing paper.
I look forward to ongoing dialogue, in the interests of our planet and our grandchildren.
Michael
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