How very un-green my relatively green job is

Happy post-Turkey day to you all! I must say that I am very thankful for many things, including being in control of my own bowel movements, the luxury of being able to travel to see family, and the game of football. Anyhow, here's my belated offering from last week that, in a haze of sugar and pigskin, I didn't post :)


Most of you know my many and varied feelings about my Day Job, and this isn't exactly the forum to discuss it, but a week or so ago, an email came through the pipeline that seemed relevant to this discussion.

-----Original Message-----
...
Sent: Fri 11/16/2007 1:27 PM
Subject: It's easy being green...

I know that with all of our busy schedules, thinking about what we can do for the environment isn't exactly top of mind. But did you know that by reducing power consumption and monitoring paper usage we can help save money - and the planet?

* 10,000 sheets of paper are used by a single office worker every year and 95% of it is thrown away without being recycled. Businesses that actively manage their printing infrastructures can reduce their overall cost of printing by up to 30%.
* Companies can save 40% to 80% of their energy costs simply by adopting conservation practices like making sure lights are turned off when not in use. Something as simple as making sure you turn off your monitor at night and shutting down your computer completely will really add up if everyone participates.

Please look for ways to save electricity and paper over the next year - it really can make a difference.

Thanks,

Now, I should be happy about this, right? Well, yes, in a sense I am. I appreciate that someone other than me is saying something about this. Since I started work there last November, I have desperately tried to reduce the amount of paper I use. It was just getting ridiculous, printing out every step of the processing for sending out an e-mail. Still, though, we are required to print 3-5 sheets of paper for every eBlast we process, and that's just for the client I work on. I've noticed that, for other clients, there's even more paper. And this is just for e-mail. This is to say nothing of the junk mail they print and mail from the back warehouse.

I don't know much about the environmental impact associated with the energy & resources used for electronic file storage, but at first glance it seems that storing all of these files electronically, on an external jump drive or something, would HAVE to be less impactful than printing out the documentation! Yes, like with my Prius, there is an environmental cost to the production of the microchips, and to the energy supply needed to run the electronics.
However, we can't assume that business will simply stop. So can't we use the reusable microchips to store our documentation? I am sure that the answer lies in the fact that it is "more expensive" to store the data electronically. Which touches back on the idea of economies of scope - the cost of the paper appears less than the cost of the microchips, even though ultimately we are paying a huge price that isn't readily quantifiable.

I asked if we couldn't do all of the documentation electronically, but was told that there still had to be paper documentation of some sort. ::sigh::

So that's my two cents on the first "*". On the second "*", I began to recognize that this person was appealing to people's sense of "cost". But in reality, people don't understand that energy cost as being borne by THEM! They see the Giant Corporation as bearing the "cost," and this has no real impact on their paychecks or their consciouses.

I think that this person's email would have been much more effective had s/he appealed to the employee's sense of morality.