Sustainable Paper and Print: July 2011

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Five environmental impacts of electronic communications

Below is a brief look at some key environmental impacts over the life cycle of computers and their various accessories, with the objective of introducing some of the environmental challenges that the ICT industry faces, especially given the perception that replacing paper and print with digital communication is "better" for the environment (1). The following information is based on a brochure produced by NewPage (2) supplemented by other references.

Overview of the life cycle

1. Raw material extraction

Computers contain several non-renewable natural resources extracted from the earth and processed, often requiring a significant amount of resources and energy. These include sand (to make glass for screens), oil (used for plastics), and several metals used in wiring and circuitry. The type of metals depend on the age of the components and can include lead, gold, iron, aluminum, zinc, nickel, tin, magnesium, silver, mercury, arsenic, cadmium, chromium and others. Some of these are becoming increasingly scarce and sometimes their supply chain leads to operations with questionable social and environmental issues. For example, coltan is a rare metal that contains tantalum, a key component of electronic circuitry in computers, smart phones and e-readers. The global tantalum capacitor market is worth about $2 billion annually. Based on an article by the Globe and Mail (3), a significant amount of coltan is mined in the Democratic Republic of Congo and helping finance a civil war.

2. Material manufacturing

After extraction and processing, raw materials are then used in the production of other raw materials for the computer's components. A publication by the United Nations University (4) has estimated that the manufacture of a computer and monitor weighing 53 lbs (24 kg) requires 10 times the amount of fossil fuels (over 530 lbs or 240 kg), 50 lbs (23 kg) of chemicals and 3300 lbs (1497 kg) of water. For an automobile or refrigerator, for example, the weight of fossil fuels used for production is roughly equal to their weights.

3. Computer and accessory manufacturing, packaging and transport

Compnent materials are then made into parts such as hard drives, screens and plastic housings. More often than not, these parts are shipped elsewhere for assembly into the finished computer. The computer or accessories are then packaged, usually in plastics and cardboard for protection during transit.

Packaged computers and their accessories are shipped all over the world, many travelling large distances from where they were manufactured. This influences the carbon footprint of the product, with truck transport contributing the most and rail or ship the least (per kg or lb of product).

4. Use

The volume of data being generated, transmitted and stored as a result of Internet use has exploded, and Web server farms or data centers have grown with it. Each facility draws a significant amount of power to run and cool the thousands of computers it takes to keep up with 24-hour-a-day fast-growing demand. It is estimated that the production and running of the ICT sector equates to 2% of global GHG emissions, similar to the airline industry, and this is expected to double by 2020 (5). As an example, every year 62 trillion spam emails are sent, contributing greenhouse gases equivalent to two billion gallons of gasoline, or enough to drive a car around the globe 1.6 million times (6).

5. End of Life

Based on the U.S. EPA, the U.S. is discarding older electronic products faster than ever due to the short life-span of electronics (7,8). In 2005, 26 to 37 million computers became obsolete. In 2007 about 1.5 to 1.8 million tons were primarily disposed in landfills and only 18% of e-waste was recycled. A total of 61% were exported for remanufacture or refurbishment.

Some of the constituents, such as lead, nickel, cadmium, and mercury, could pose risks to human health or the environment if mismanaged at their end-of-life. The U.S. EPA strongly supports keeping used electronics out of landfills to recover materials and reduce the environmental impacts and energy demands from mining and manufacturing (8). For example:

Recycling 1 million laptops saves the same amount of electricity used by 3,657 US homes in a year.
One metric ton of circuit boards can contain 40 to 800 times the concentrations of gold ore mined in the US and 30-40 times the concentration of copper ore mined in the US.

One concern is that large amounts of e-waste are sent to China, India and Kenya where workers may be unprotected and exposed to hazardous materials like mercury and lead in the process of burning electronics in search of copper and aluminum to resell. Greenpeace USA, the Basel Action Network (BAN) and The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition currently lead campaigns focused on e-waste issues (9,10,11).

Opportunities

Buying from a company that is making efforts to be sustainable is a good start. For example, the electronic tools used to produce this blog were made by Acer, NEC and Hewlett-Packard. All three companies have thorough sustainability programs outlined on their web sites, showing engagement with the key environmental and social issues (12,13,14). Anyone interested in "green" electronics should also be aware of the EPEAT Registry for Green Electronics (15). In addition, consider turning off your computer at night and weekends, donating old computers and recycling your electronics.

All manufacturing sectors have challenging environmental issues and are working to improve the situation. Paper, print and e-media will co-exist for many years to come. They all have either negative or positive environmental, social and economic impacts that can be continuously improved. Given the fact that forest products have such unique environmental features (renewable, recyclable, carbon capture and storage, supporting sustainable forest management), perhaps there are unique partnership opportunities with the ICT sector, especially in the area of sustainable product design. Server farms could easily be powered by renewable biomass from sustainably managed forests. With emerging research on nano-cellulose, wood-plastic composites, and bio-diesel, perhaps the forest products from my woodlot will also one day be valued, not only for pulp and timber, but for biochemicals extracted from woody biomass to make renewable plastic and bio-diesel fuel used in computer manufacturing.

References

http://www.payitgreen.org/

Paper has a head start – the public ought to know

When made responsibly, it's difficult to find a more sustainable product than paper due to its unique features:

It is the most recycled product in the world.

It is based on a renewable resource - trees that can be managed responsibly to retain the environmental, social and economic benefits of forests.

It is produced using a high percentage of renewable biomass energy.

It can be re-used for many other applications.

It is relaxing to read, and simple to use.

It is more effective for learning and literacy.

Look around you. How many products have these environmental and social features? Most are based on non-renewable materials, have much lower recycling rates.

But yet we are bombarded with slogans like "Go paperless - Go Green", "Paper kills trees", and other negative and misleading messages regarding paper and print. At a recent NHL hockey game I attended with my son I even saw an ad (on the big suspended screen) claiming that the use of recycled content tissue paper is saving forests and "nature". It essentially told 20,000 people that "using wood to make paper is bad"!

Beware the Seven Sins of Greenwash

As a starting point we should agree that all products have an environmental impact over their life-cycles and all products should be manufactured in the most sustainable way possible. With that in mind, less consumption is better for the planet, especially given dwindling resources and rising populations. However, communicating the environmental benefits and disadvantages of products needs to be done with the product life-cycle in mind, and it should not mislead people. It needs to be factual, verifiable and not exaggerated (as per environmental marketing guidelines) (1). Claiming that a product is "better for the environment" due to one feature only (i.e. recycled fiber), is considered one of the Seven Sins of Greenwashing (2).

The sustainable use of recycled fiber to make paper products is good practice. However, by making recycled a "gold" standard and talking about "saving trees" we are doing our industry a disfavor. Here are some key points again regarding recycled fiber use in paper (3):

Recycled fiber is based on wood fiber. Without the use of wood, recycled disappears.

Recycled fiber breaks down after 4-6 times of recycling, it becomes waste.

A minimum of 40% wood fiber is needed to make the global fiber cycle work.

Without wood, the production of paper ceases in a time period between 6 and 18 months depending on the paper grade, including toilet paper.

Over 80% of recovered paper in the world is used for carton and paperboard, only 6% in printing and writing grades.

The message people need to get is that the world needs a sustainable fiber cycle made up of well-managed forests and recycled paper. We need both to make all the various paper and board products used today. In fact, they will both continue to be the main source of fiber for papermaking for the next two decades and beyond (4). We need to keep our working forests and we need to manage them responsibly, or else they will eventually be replaced by shopping malls and highways because there is no incentive for landowners to keep them. Forest conservation today only covers 12% of the global forests (5). In other words, sustainable forest management and developing incentives to keep our forests is critical for our environment. Replacing forest products with products made from non-renewable materials that involve more intrusive land uses to extract (mining, oil extraction) is perhaps not a more sustainable choice over the long term.

Paper already has a head start

In the past two years, the positive messaging regarding the sustainability of paper and print has gained momentum. Two sides (http://www.twosides.info/), a non-profit focused on telling the positive environmental story of paper and print has had good success and is present in 12 European countries and working on a start-up in the US. One of their success stories has been a campaign to convince major corporations against using misleading environmental messaging related to e-billing (i.e. the go paperless - go green message). The web site is worth a visit to view myths and facts about paper and print, as well as many case studies and resources for download.

Both Domtar (www.paperbecause.com) and International Paper (http://www.internationalpaper.com/apps/gopaper/index.html) have launched initiatives to promote the sustainable features of paper and make the connection between paper and well-managed forests. Here are a list of some other publications and web sites on this topic:

FFIF (Versatile Paper brochure) http://www.forestindustries.fi/Infokortit/Versatilepaperbrochure/Pages/default.aspx

NewPage (Ed brochure on "Balance") http://edliveshere.com/content/balance/25/introduction/

UPM-Kymmene (Forest Life Interactive Site with Video) http://www.upmforestlife.com/

International Paper (The Little Green Book) h ttp://www.internationalpaper.com/Apps/GreenBook/EN/index.html

WBCSD (The Sustainable Forest Products Industry, Carbon and Climate Change) http://www.wbcsd.org/DocRoot/X1ZvkdDg4I9bOXKoXW8P/sfpi-carbon-climate.pdf

The tide may be slowly turning on the perception of paper and print. A stronger international voice led by organizations like Two Sides may be a logical next step, given that paper and print is everywhere and touches almost every person on the planet. This type of global network would strengthen the credibility, expertise and reach of a positive message.

In the end, it's not a question of paper vs other products (i.e. e-media, plastic) but rather a combination of products, produced in a way that continuously reduces overall impacts on the planet and meet our society's needs. However, paper does have a head-start on many other products due to its unique environmental features.

References

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/grnrule/guides980427.htm,http://www.csreurope.org/pages/en/sustainablemarketing_guide.html

http://sinsofgreenwashing.org/findings/greenwashing-report-2009/

Metafore. 2006. The Fibre Cycle Technical Document. Summary Report, March 2006. 14 p.

Pöyry 2009. World Fibre Outlook up to 2025, 2009 edition, Volume 1, Executive Report (Confidential Report).

http://www.fao.org/forestry/fra/fra2010/en/