Going Paperless and the Environment

Guides also can make a significant impact in helping individuals and organizations reduce their paper consumption, which continues to have a devastating impact on our environment.

Guides are primarily used for long-form content, making PDFs the #1 competitor to our format. Not only are PDFs a horrible experience for reading and navigating content on any digital device, they are quite literally formatted to be printed, and thereby enable and perpetuate the printing culture . There are no stats available on how many PDFs are printed vs consumed digitally, but if we estimate that 10% of the 9 million Guide views were printed (instead of viewed online), that would result in eliminating 12.6 million printed pages, 126,000 pounds of paper, and saved over 1,500 trees.

This matters. While trees are a renewable resource, the environmental damage of harvesting trees, processing into paper, and printing, and waste at scale is significant. Some quick facts:

Paper:

• Globally we use over 40 million tons of paper per year
• Current recycling rates of paper vary between 50-60%. That means that nearly half the paper produced is thrown away and ends up in our landfills.
• It takes nearly half a litre of water to produce 1 sheet of office paper; the paper industry is the largest industrial user of water per kg of finished product.
• The paper and pulp industry is the fourth largest user of energy worldwide and the 4th largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions
• Production of 1 ton of copy paper produces 2,278 lb of solid waste and 5,690 lb. of greenhouse gases (the equivalent of 6 months of car exhaust)

Cartridges:

• Use oil and iron ore to produce, and contain volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that cause damage to both human health and the natural environment.
• It takes 2.8 - 3.7 litres of crude oil to produce one laser cartridge and 50-100 millilitres of crude oil to produce one ink cartridge.
• Greenhouse gas emissions from manufacturing an original laser cartridge emits approximately 4.8 kg CO2.
• Between 70-80% of cartridges are used once and then disposed of. This equates to approximately 3.6 million kg of waste ending up in our landfills.

Printers:

• Printers and their power consumption can account for up to 7% of an organisation's total electricity consumption.
• Only 15% of printer electricity usage is attributed to printing. The majority of electricity expenditure is while the device is on standby.
• It is estimated that 106 billion printers are sold annually. They typically last between 3 and 5 years before needing to be replaced, becoming hazardous waste (electronic waste) at end of life.