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Paper Manufacturer Launches "Print More" Campaign
innocent_white_lamb writes "Domtar, a major North American paper manufacturer, has launched an advertising campaign to encourage people to print more documents on paper. Domtar CEO John Williams opposes campaigns by other companies asking employees to be responsible with what they print. 'Young people really are not printers. When was the last time your children demanded a printer?' Mr. Williams said ... 'We've got to do some work about having them believe and feel that printing isn't a sort of environmental negative.' The industry expects that, absent this campaign, paper demand will decrease by 4% annually. Williams's comments did not go down well in some environmental circles."
FTA:
'We've got to do some work about having them believe and feel that printing isn't a sort of environmental negative.'
But it is an environmental negative.
It's made from fast growing wood that is grown on farms for the express purpose of making paper, so it's not like they're not chopping down old growth forests. And offices around the country routinely recycle their paper, which make a whiter pulp that requires even less bleach than raw wood.
It's just not that big of a deal to me if it gets the point across better.
I certainly don't print just to print, but I don't feel like I have to stop and pity the poor trees that gave their lives for my TPS cover sheets.
John
If ANYONE in power had balls and brains, we'd be using hemp paper instead of wood-based pulp paper. That is all.
The continued government assisted prop-up of industries unwilling to evolve with technology, or environmental social concerns, is why we have half the problems we do. Why must this behavior persist?
Paper is a renewable resource. Printing documents doesn't destroy forests, because most paper comes from tree farms. If you don't print out this Slashdot article, the tree you think you're saving will just get cut down for someone else. Then, another tree will be planted to replace it. Your paper doesn't come from ancient trees in the South American rainforest.
It takes the accumulation of 35+ years of squinting at monitors, TV screens, game consoles, and books/newspapers in poorly lit rooms before people generally decide that they would prefer hardcopy for a significant percentage of their reading.
It's not an environmental "negative". They plant three times as many trees as they harvest. Paper is a truly renewable resource, especially since it is recyclable, in many different ways.
Printing pages pointlessly is a negative, because you waste energy in the paper production, for no good reason. And you waste your own money. But using paper "responsibly" -- for things you want to keep hard copies of -- is entirely appropriate, and not wasteful.
After all, I am strangely colored.
In the best case, paper is CO2 neutral. On average it is still CO2 positive. Not that I mind. :)
But he is bound by law to do the most he can to improve sales and shareholder value, regardless of the environmental cost, social need or greater economic benefit.
In what jurisdiction? Cite, please.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Paper: it's what books were made of before DRM.
I've realized it's no longer economical to print. Every time I print, I need to spend $50 for a new set of ink cartridges. In contrast, it's cheaper to pay to overnight concert tickets and e-file taxes. In short, there needs to be a printer that can run forever on a $10 ink cartridge in order to get me to print again.
No, I will not work for your startup
It's not an environmental "negative". They plant three times as many trees as they harvest.
Do they undo the damage of the chemicals used in paper manufacturing? Do they put back into the ground all the oil that is used for shipping paper around? Do they go around and pull out all the paper that people throw away from the landfills?
There is still no technology that is superior to paper when it comes to reading and reviewing articles.
Although I write on the computer all day, when it comes to giving my full attention to reading a complex paper, I cannot do it without printing it out. Somehow the ability to find a comfortable position and scribble all over it with the freedom of an actual pencil allows me to relax and go into deep-thinking mode much better.
Ebook readers just aren't anywhere near what they need to be in order to replace paper for reading PDFs.
And I see nothing wrong with a company that sells paper launching an advertising campaign encouraging people to use their product. They are just a business trying to make a profit at what they do. If you think printing on paper needs to be cut back, then lobby for some new laws to limit how much paper can be produced, but attacking the paper companies for trying to make a profit is not the right way to go about it.
It's like the oil company lobbyists "there is no global warming"; okay "there is global warming, but it's not caused by humans"; okay "the global warming is caused by humans but it's within the normal limits"; okay, "the global warming is exceptional but it's for the good"; okay "the global warming is bad, but not using petrol would be worse"; okay "the global warming will be deadly but we'll be able to find a solution"; okay "we haven't found a solution, but we have lots of lobbyists, money and lawyers".
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
Congratulations, you've noticed that humans are selfish short thinking bastards. Capitalism just lets them be that way more efficiently. Of course, Soviet and Chinese Communism are the kings of destroying the environment.
Of course, the computer you're on is the direct result of centuries of environment destroying progress that wouldn't have existed without capitalism. Actually you'd probably be dead without all the medical advanced it helped to come to pass. Granted, hypocrisy seems to be the staple of zealots.
environmentalists are just messed up and confused, they've got so many cruisades on these days they are bound to conflict.
Can you point to a group of people united in a cause that this is not true for? Open source or linux crowds? Moral crusaders? Liberals? Conservatives? Religious fundamentalists? You really shouldn't knock a cause based off of it's weakest links. Except for humor, like the whole "living in our parent's basement" thing we have going on here.
Speaking of, I think I heard the microwave upstairs tell me my hotpocket is done. Gonna eat it and talk trash on ubuntu now.
It's a managed forest plainly and openly maintained as a source of lumber, not a managed recreational nature preserve.
Repeat that, over and over, until you get it.
[sarcasm]In other news, I was shocked at the absolute lack of biodiversity the last time I walked through a wheat field. Imagine it: A huge field, hundreds of acres, where they've managed to grow almost nothing but wheat! What a waste.[/sarcasm]
Kid-proof tablet..
I was shocked at the absolute lack of biodiversity the last time I walked through a wheat field. Imagine it: A huge field, hundreds of acres, where they've managed to grow almost nothing but wheat! What a waste.
It works much better without the sarcasm tags. Repeat that over and over, and perhaps you'll get it.
There is something wrong with such a lack of biodiversity, especially when you consider that approximately 40% of the land in the US is currently cultivated like this.
You do realize that trees grow back right?
They can plant new trees, but they can't bring back the ecosystem that was destroyed.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
The shit printer manufacturers put us through. Smaller ink cartridges, no refill, timed killswitch, DRM, "need ink to scan" and the shit of "cheap printer, expensive cartridges" they put us through. People see it and avoid it. They realize a page printed in the home printer is about $0.50, so a booklet of 50 pages will be $25. I have no qualms printing 100 pages at $0.03 per page on my old laser printer. But I see how people wince when an ink printer spits out a full-color test page at a wrong press of a button. And endless problems - drying up ink, printers failing and so on.
Take a step back towards printers with reasonable cost per page, and the paper sales will increase...
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The obvious issue you're missing here is that people are specifically setting aside land for trees for renewable paper resources. If the demand for the paper wasn't there, there'd be no monetary incentive to grow the trees, these aren't just "found trees" on land nobody owns, they're a for-profit concern. The only way this would be viable is if governments paid the owners for the trees to remain uncut, or purchased the land for the same purpose, but that would likely require some kind of green tax and for people to actually support their principles with cold, hard cash, which is usually the sticking point.
Assuming we can't find such a solution, the question right now is whether growing the trees and sinking them into paper is better for the environment than, say, turning the same land over to cattle or food production. In an ideal world people would just grow trees, but this is far from an ideal world, so we have to look at practical solutions.
What humans too frequently forget is that the Earth is a fragile eco-system and you can quite often do a lot of bad by trying to do good. One example is the negative publicity about nuclear in the 80's, for instance, which has probably been more detrimental to the Earth since we've relied on the more polluting coal and oil industries instead - in an ideal world we'd rely on renewables of course, but again, the real world requires practical solutions. Another case in point, only today there's a story about the clean air act in the US actually contributing to climate change, good intentions which, prima facie seem to be laudable but have negative outcomes, we're just too reactionary a race and the whole "stop using paper" movement is another potential area where we need to consider all the facts before making a decision, and all the solutions. For instance, off the top of my head, it might be better that trees collect the CO2 into paper simply because we then have a form of carbon that's easier to deal with than having it loose in the atmosphere, even if we're not dealing with it very well right now, and of course that has to be offset by the negative impact of actually producing and transporting paper products.
Effective at what?
I clean my hands because I am bent on choosing the things that end up in my mouth, even though I just use a dry piece of toilet paper to wipe it, I keep my anus out of my mouth just fine.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
[sarcasm]In other news, I was shocked at the absolute lack of biodiversity the last time I walked through a wheat field. Imagine it: A huge field, hundreds of acres, where they've managed to grow almost nothing but wheat! What a waste.[/sarcasm]
You jest, but this really is a problem. This kind of monoculture is one of the reasons soil is losing its fertility, and needs the huge input of artificial (petroleum-based) fertilizers. It looks efficient in the short term, but it isn't sustainable.
You need to take a deeper look at things, and how they are connected to other things. Repeat that, over and over, until you get it.