Are computers more eco-friendly than paper?

Hey there, Wow, it's been a long time since I've heard that. Yeah, my World War Worldwide Rather tour is over, so I'm back to Hey there, all right, So what are we gonna talk about today? Oh? Well, actually today we're going to talk about subject that was brought up by one of our listeners. This is from Sandra Almost said Sarah. I'm sorry, Sandra. Here's what she has to say. Hi, Chris and Jonathan. First, let me say I really enjoy your podcast and listen to every episode. Thanks for all

the hard work. I'm learning a lot and it's mostly painless. I bet that has something to do with the jokes we tell. I'm all right, I'm writing to suggest an idea for a podcast. Over the last few years, we've moved to doing everything online, from banking and paying bills to entertainment and socializing. While it's true we can save paper and gas by doing more online, I think it's

misleading to think it's more energy efficient overall. I recently read an article that said we have to build five new power plants every year just to support the increased energy needed for I T alone. That would be bad enough if server farms operated at peak efficiency, but apparently they're incredibly inefficient, so much of this energy is wasted. I'd like to learn more about the impact of our bandwidth hungry lifestyle and its impact on the environment and

our economy. I hope you'll consider this for a future podcast. Thanks for considering it, Sandra, Well, Sandra, thanks a lot for writing in. That's an ex silent email, and we're gonna try and tackle this. It's it turns out this is a really tricky subject to to talk about, not because of any controversy or anything like that, but just because when you start to look at the whole issue, you begin to realize the picture is a little larger

than what you first thought. Right. Oh, definitely and then you look at that and you're like, wait, wait, wait, wait wait, if I have to consider this, then I need to consider this next element. So the picture gets a little bigger, and it gets bigger and bigger until you end up hiding under your desk and weeping softly speak for yourself. Okay, Well, Josh, Josh knows I often actually will hide under his desk because he's very comforting. Yes,

I understand. Yeah, As it turns out, we sort of worked ourselves into a hole, so to speak, because, um, we rely on both paper and computer technology. Um, and neither one of them is particularly environmentally friendly, and neither one of them is particularly harm so much more than the other. Yeah, they're harmful in different ways. Yeah they're yeah, exactly, and they're good and bad things about both. So, um, I was gonna tackle print and paper to start with,

if you don't mind. Okay. So I was reading up on a couple of different subjects, one of the which was, you know, how much uh energy it takes to create a book? Um. There was another one that was talking about how much energy it takes to make a ream of paper, And you know, it's it's an interesting thing to read about and really again, you have to think about the whole big picture, not just how many trees you had to cut down or you know, the processing

plant for the trees to turn the lumber into paper. Um, there are a lot of different things you have to think about, like after after the papers made, it has to be shipped somewhere. When it's being shipped somewhere, that that the fuel is going to put an impact on the environment. The uh, just the travel and wear and

tear puts an impact. I mean eventually you start looking at this like a domino effect, right, Like okay, well that also means you have to maintain the trucks and the trains and wait a minute, that also means that if it goes into a store, you have to pay for things like lights in the store. Like where does

it end? Is the question? But in general. There was a study done by the Book Industry Study Group and Green Press Initiative not too long ago where they try to estimate how much carbon is produced through the publication of a single book. The conclusion that they came to was that each book contributes about eight point eight five pounds of carbon. So every single book you see, essentially that's what it took to make that book possible, including

you know, coffee table books. Yeah, well, I mean I think it's I think it's an average because, yeah, I'm saying, like the monster at the end of this book probably doesn't have as big an environmental impact as say, the Lord of the Rings. Now impact upon my life equally huge, but not upon the environment. Um And they also estimated that the publishing industry generates about twelve point for million metric tons of carbon per year. It's a lot of carbon.

Significant And now you have to also remember that when you're creating paper, obviously you're creating paper from lumber. You're gonna have to get that lumber somewhere, so you have to cut down trees. And trees are what we call a carbon sink. So trees help take carbon out of

the environment, mostly through carbon dioxide. Um And So if you start cutting down the trees, not only are you in the process that you're going through to create whatever it is you're creating in this case paper, not only are you creating carbon that's going into the environment, you're taking away the the ability to absorb that carbon because you're removing some of the trees. So that's that's not

good for the environment. And uh, and we've been consuming more and more paper products, um as the years have gone by. I read an interesting report by green pdf. Now, granted, you have to take this with a grain of salt. You have to always consider the source of the information you're receiving. Um. If you're receiving information from an environmental like a pro environment kind of source, you have to remember, all right, well, let's look around see if there's any

other independent sources that verify this information. Same thing if you read from a pro industry source. Right, absolutely, so you want to be far as much as the time as you can. Right. You don't wanna you don't want to just assume that the information you're reading is in fact, uh,

completely accurate. You need to kind of look around. But what green pdf said was that on average, uh, each person in the world consumes about a hundred and twenty three pounds of paper per year, and of the paper consumed is used in printing documents, and the average office employee uses seven reams of paper per year. All right, so here's some more figures for you. One point one billion trees are cut down for this paper supply each year,

fifty million metric tons of lumber. And uh you think each tree removes about one ton one metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. Uh. And each tree can make about a hundred and seventy three realms of paper. Okay, so there's a lot of a lot of figures, facts and figures for you. A realm of paper, by the way, UM, producing it dumps about twelve pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. UM. So you know obviously that's a big environmental impact. UM. I mean, trees

are a renewable resource. You can grow more uh trees if you need to. And the thing is a lot of environmental organizations will tell you that they there is some difference between trees taken from a sustainable forest versus old growth trees. And there are some companies that are I mean, if you really want to go looking for it, you can find lists of companies that will tell you the ones who use sustainable lumber versus old growth forests. UM.

You know, if you are so inclined to do that. UM. The thing also that I you know that I think that we should mention is the chemicals, because if you're creating say a craft paper bag, you know, brown paper bag that you would see at a grocery store. You know, that's pretty much that doesn't really require a lot of

of coloring. But if you want bleached white paper that that you'd get for you know, for example, school notebook paper or um paper for your laser printer, that takes bleach and those chemicals go into a water source someplace

in a lot of cases, Um, you know. I I remember actually driving across Tennessee, UH and seeing signs an environmental organization and taking out signs near the Pigeon River because there was a paper plant upstream and they they used the billboard and it changed ever ever so often, but it would actually you know, point out that this particular paper company was you know, dumping chemicals into the water. And uh, you know, it affects a lot of things.

It's not just you know, the trees being cut down in the carbon dock side. It has another impact on the environment just from the actual production, the other costs of production, if you will. Sure. Yeah, I I grew up in uh near Lake Lanier, um in in Hull County, Georgia, and UH and we had paper mills, not too far from the house. So when the wind was blowing in a certain direction, you'd get that lovely oh yeah scent

of the paper mill. It was blowing in the other direction, chicken farms, so it was blowing in one particular direction. You got the best of both worlds. Oh yeah, and then you know, you get the environmental impact of both of those, right, yeah, tasting, So that that's kind of the whole paper thing. So we're talking, you know, and of course there are ways you can you can reduce

the environmental impact of using paper. If you're using paper that that is certified as carbon neutral, arguably that means that the company is doing something to offset the fact that they're taking trees. Uh there, you know, they're cutting them down, maybe they're planning more, maybe they're buying carbon offsets. But if you have a carbon neutral kind of solution to your paper, you might not be making quite as big an impact on the environment. Now, there's still other elements.

You know, you were still talking about the production and the shipping, shipping, just the you know, just just the energy you need to run a plant. I mean that that that energy that's coming from that electricity. So you know, there's still things that are going to affect the environment, whether or not you're using like totally recycled paper or whatever. That that's true. UM, And of course there are costs environmental costs and um financial costs to recycling to it

does help, of course. So if you buy recycled paper, UM, that encourages them to continue making recycled paper and to recycled paper when you you know, are done using it. UM. You can always use the backsides of paper. Try to duplex print if you're going to have to print something. Here's one of my big pet peeves. If you work in an office where people do a lot of printing, you're gonna see a giant stack of stuff that people printed out but never came to pick up. Don't be

one of those people. If you're going to print something, print it because you need it and you're actually gonna use it. That that's just one of my big pet peeves. You know, I I find that I need to use paper from time to time. I try not to use tons of it ha ha literally but no figuratively speaking. And the thing is, you know, I go over there and I see that big pile of paper, and it

stress me crazy. Um, so they understand that. The one thing though, that I that I find interesting about paper when I think, well I'm going to shift to online, is once the paper is produced, it's produced. It's it's there. It's not doing anything. It's not you know, contributing to or or detracting from the CEO two levels of the planet. So I mean, if you have paper and are using it responsibly and not over using it, then you know

it's a sustainable resource. So there's something to be said for a piece of paper as opposed to say, a computer, which is going to draw a power constantly. I mean, unless you've unplugged it or you're using a uh one of the power strips that can prevent vampire power from going on your your computer is always drawing some power. Vampire power for the uninitiated, is um say you have your computer plugged into a power strip and you've turned it off so that you can go to work the computer.

That is right, right, that's a good point. That's a good point. You turn your computer off, that left the power strip on your computer is still going to be drawing some power. As a matter of fact, if you if you have a desktop computer like a tower and you take the side of it off for the front of it off where you can actually see, you'll probably see a couple of the little LEDs inside that tell you that there's something going on. Um. It's basically keeping

the machine running. It. The same could be said for your TV. People don't want to wait for the TV to come on, so the manufacturers built in you know, uh, the capacity to store energy so that you can turn it on and it pops on very quickly. Well, the thing is, it takes electricity to do that, you know, very low flow, and that's called vampire power. If you turn the power strip off, it stops drawing power. Unplugging

it will really stop it. Yeah and um. And and then we should point out that even the vampire power, although it is you know, a constant thing, um, it's not drawing nearly the same amount of power as your computer would when it's running, especially if it's running like full speed, like running a very heavy application. UM. So when we're talking about computers, were really looking at things like energy efficiency. Uh, you know, whether or not you are using any of the sleep or idle modes, or

if you're turning your computer off. Um. And also not only that. But when you're talking about online applications now you have to look at, as Sandra pointed out, data centers and data centers. They okay, for those who don't know, a data center is essentially a collection of servers, and it could be a small center. And when when I say small, most people would think of a small center. Like most people the I T. Baz would say, like,

a hundred servers is kind of small. Google has has data centers that with the servers that number in the thousands and tens of thousands, and they've got these enormous buildings their size of several warehouses put together, filled with these machines all running, their generating tons of heat, they're consuming lots of electricity, and they always have to be on because if they go off, your service goes away.

That's that's no more Gmail. That's no more access to any of the files that you've stored in the cloud, that's no more Search exactly. Yeah. So the thing about that is that those machines are constantly running, and there are probably at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions,

of machines doing that at anyone given time. And the Internet is made up of computers talking to one another, right, and and a computer running, uh, you know, actively running can consume anywhere between I don't know what, like like a hundred and something wats per hour to up to three hundred depending on the machine, maybe even more, I guess if you've got to really power hungry device. But so you gotta think there are these thousands and thousands

of machines that are running all the time. If you're using a lot of online services, UM, then you're contributing to the need for more machines, which means that you know, you're indirectly you are contributing to an environmental impact. So, uh, what what can we do about this? Well, I mean, if you don't use it, I don't think they're going

to be fewer computers out there. But what we can really hope for is that these companies will start looking into ways to um to power their data centers in a renewable fashion that's not dependent upon you know, traditional electricity power plants to generate electricity. Google's doing that. As a matter of FACTUM, I have some family up in the Northwest, and um Google has they generated headlines generated

sorry for the pun generated headlines. A few a couple of years ago because they were building a giant data center UM in a town near Portlands called the Dolls UM. The thing is, you'd think, wow, that's you know that you look at the the Google Earth view of this place and you go, man, that's got to have tons

and tons of computers. And I'm and I'm sure it does. However, it's also along the Columbia River and the from what I understand that that data center draws a lot of its power from water, right, hydroelectric power exactly, So you know, there are there are things that they're doing there and uh, I believe a solar power to to try to offset some of the uh fossil fuel costs the electricity there. And and also I just wrote a blog post about

this recently. As of the recording of this podcast. By the time this goes live, it will actually be old news,

but you can always go back and look at it. UM. But I did a blog post about this patent that Google applied for and was granted for a floating data center, and it's essentially a data center on a boat, and the full design incorporates UM some devices that generate electricity through the motion of water so both waves and tidal motions, and UM and also uses the water as a coolant to keep the servers cool, so it doesn't have to

you know, it doesn't. It can just utilize the power of the sea to keep it going and it's not drawing power from a power plant like most data centers are. Well, um, you know, Google actually has its own organization in house that looks at renewable energy sources. It's called ARIS lesson C and UM I actually this had come up before we had started talked about the idea of writing an article or doing a podcast about this subject. Before UM

and UM I got some information on that. Um Eric Tetzel, who's the program manager for ARIS lesson C, said that a Google search takes three ten thousands of a kill a lot, which generates about point two grams of c O two every time you search Google. So you know, it's small, it's a very small impact. However, you know how many people are searching Google every day any point of the day. Yeah, sure, so, I mean if you think about that and how much that search energy is,

you know the cost of that search energy. Google and other companies have good reason to look into other sources because I mean environmental impact aside, it's got a financial impact. So if they could find some renewable sources, especially non polluting ones that you know, make them look better, I mean, it's it's a win exactly, it's a it's a good

move for them. And and just like we were talking with the paper, with all the additional factors that you have to take into account, the same things true with computers. I mean, if you're ultimately you're gonna have to think, Okay, what did it cost environmentally speaking to produce this computer? What did it cost environmentally speaking to build the data centers? Um? You know, it's it's these are costs that are essentially one time costs for per machine, just like a book

is a one time cost. But it's like, again, you start looking at this big picture situation where everything gets linked in together, and there's there's not really an easy solution because there's no real way where you can just you can't point to one thing and say this is the source of the problem because it's so much larger than that. Yeah, yeah, and uh, I mean there's more than the carbon footprint of manufacturing a computer, let alone taking it apart. I mean, so many of them end

up in landfills because people don't recycle them. There's let, there's cadmium, There's all kinds of stuff there, uh, and it gets into the groundwater. There's the environmental impact of that. Right. The more often you replace your computer, uh, and the more computers you own that need to be replaced, that just adds to that impact. So there's something to be said uh for that too. So what we're getting down to here is that there's no easy answer of saying

is paper better than using a computer or vice versa. Um. What we can say is there are certain behaviors you can follow that will help decrease your impact on the environment. And if everyone does this that that does make a difference. UM. But we can't, you know, we can't just sit there

and sign off on one versus the other. So using things like recycled paper, um, you know, only using paper when you need to, that kind of thing, as well as UH, if you're using your computer and you're going to be away from your computer for a couple of hours, it's okay to go ahead and turn that off. Uh. The everyone want to worry is about whether or not the spike that you were that you experienced when you first turn a computer on, if that if that negates

the effect you would have of turning it off. In most cases, it does not. In most cases, especially the longer you keep it off, the greater the benefit is. So if you are going to bed at night and you're not gonna be up and using the computer for eight or ten hours, turning it off is probably the best choice. And if you can't turn it off, or you know you just you can't, you're just not going to Using a sleep mode um can also really really

help out. A sleep mode might be just a couple of percentage points of what the active mode would be. And don't assume that a screen saver is the same thing as a sleep mode, because yeah, it actually can generate a lot of it can drain a lot of power because I mean, you know you're running you're running a program, is what you're doing, and it's displaying something

a monitor. So if you have a desktop computer and a monitor is keeping the monitor a week, right, So don't just you know, it'll go to screen saver and that'll that'll save money. No, go ahead and put it onto sleep mode. I mean it might mean that it takes a little longer for it to boot up, but it you know, that's a small price to pay, I mean, and you'll be saving money on electricity bills. Yep. You can also unplug a lot of your electronics when you're not in use, or you can get smart power strips

that will do it for you. They can. A lot of the power strips now come with the ability. Now they're more expensive, I should point that out, um, but they tell the ability to go, oh, well, this thing hasn't been on for half an hour, I need to just turn this off. And and it's an upfront cost that eventually will be offset by the savings you you make, assuming that you know you're using it appropriately and you know that it's that it's that it's a device that's

going to last a few years. It may take a while, because when we're talking about savings, we're talking about you know, maybe a couple of dollars per year, which doesn't sound like you know, it's not not really that remarkable, but you are making a much lower impact on the environ that's true, that's true. I think what we really need to emphasize is that what you do, you need to do responsibly, you know, if you if you behave responsibly,

not wastefully. Um, you know, I don't think any of us are going to be able to give up our paper and computers anytime soon, and they're just too embedded in our our daily lives. I think the best thing to do is sort of mitigate and um, you know, find ways that we can contribute to, uh, reducing our carbon footprints and maybe the global carbon footprint as a as a whole. Sure I agree. Alright, Well, Sandra, thank you so much for writing in. That's a great discussion,

so we really appreciate it. Uh. If any of you wish to write us, please do so tech stuff at how stuff works dot com and remember you can go to how stuff works dot com to learn about everything we're talking about, green initiatives, technology, all sorts of great topics. Just check that out how stuff works dot com and we will talk to you again really soon. For more

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