Sustainability Blog

What is more environmentally friendly than sending electrons via cables to your laptop, desktop, or phone, miraculously materializing as documents? The answer lies in the processes involved in aligning those tiny electrons to perform their intended functions. It needs equipment; it requires money, and it can impact the world around us. We all know that paper is bad for the environment, but what if I told you it is better than using electricity?

The Myth: Digital is much more sustainable than paper and print. 

The Fact: Electronic communication is not always more environmentally friendly because it also has environmental impacts that happen behind the scenes.

Paper vs. digital is not so simple that someone can say that digital is green and paper is not. “Go Green,” “Go Paperless,” and “Save Trees” are very common sayings that you commonly hear people saying to get you to begin to openly welcome electronic communication and transactions. This has resulted in people going digital, or “modern,” which is actually hurting our environment.

Paperless is not the best way to go. The Natural Resources Defense Council explains that a small network of equipment in the homes of America consumes more than $1 billion worth of electricity, resulting in 5 million metric tons of carbon emissions, which is equivalent to the annual emissions of 1.1 million vehicles. The United States is on track to go from using 91 billion kilowatt-hours to 140 billion kilowatt-hours, which will lead to a dying planet. Paper produces less than 1% of carbon emissions, while your digital carbon footprint contributes to about 33%. 

To combat this, I, a heavy technology user, began replacing my constant use of marking up PDFs to do my work and using the paper copies my teacher provided. It felt very odd to be using paper. I would read on my iPad and do all of my assignments if I had a choice, digitally, but this challenge encouraged me to live through those hand cramps and my messy handwriting while trying to help our planet. In my history class, there are three ways to take a test: one of them is to write a paragraph (Quiz Essay), which is done digitally; another would be to answer five open-ended questions on paper (Written Quiz), and the last one would be to take an oral quiz (Oral Quiz). I normally do Quiz Essays, but I thought to myself, what would be the most beneficial to the planet? I began taking Oral Quizzes because, even though Written Quizzes were better than Quiz Essays, they were still bad for the environment. In my English class, our teacher assigned us a project where we were to write a children’s book with pictures and a new font. You could do it online or on paper. The digital option was the easy way out, but because I was challenging myself to “Go Digital-Free,” I did the project on paper, which was stressful because I had to create a font and then hand draw all the images in just four days. 

I am also a huge reader. And reading usually requires driving to the library, buying the book, or reading electronically. None of these options are completely sustainable because books have an insane number of pages. Driving a car to the library would hurt our planet because vehicle pollutants harm our health and contain greenhouse gasses that cause climate change, and my primary library also requires digital transactions. Going to buy books has the same problem as going to the library, since you need to drive to the store and buy the book, which is typically an electronic payment. Buying books online is worse because I would spend about an hour on my computer for every four books I buy, and shipping would likely have more pollution because I live in a neighborhood that is not directly on a main road. This leaves reading online, which would severely increase my digital carbon footprint, so I was left with one option: to reread my old books. This was not a horrible and not entirely foreign concept to me, but I still found a challenge in trying to find a book that I would not get bored reading.

Halfway through the challenge, I thought I needed to try something new. I re-circled back to my original ideas and remembered how, when I took up this challenge, I thought, I don't want to give up my phone; that would be too hard, but the first two weeks of this sustainability challenge taught me that a hardship for the greater good is not a choice but a necessity. I knew that, in the society we live in today, it would be impossible to completely give up my phone, so I was determined to take my screen time from 7 to 2 hours. Before the last two weeks of February happened, it was safe to say that I was chronically obsessed with my phone—I lived on it—I would even feel anxious not holding it, but now I know I do not need it to feel good. 

This journey has opened my eyes to many amazing experiences, yet it has additionally taught me something precious. I developed an awareness of both the world around me and myself. A sweeping change or significant occurrence is not inevitably required for a change to happen. Unknowingly, a minor effort like using the paper my teachers print has an enormous impact. The employment of old, already-read books saves our ozone. It was worthwhile to impart this lesson to everyone. Getting this lesson was precious. I designed an elementary infographic and shared it with my friends and a wide circle of relatives. This was just a simple poster I created in my free time, first sketching it out on paper and quickly organizing it on my iPad. I additionally became neater to ensure I could locate the papers, and I stopped taking out my phone whenever I had free time. I believe that, now, after completing this sustainability challenge, anyone and everyone should try to make a small difference for our planet because “there is no Planet B.”

By Neera Patel