Last Friday, an article in the NY Times about the demise of print media sparked an interesting debate here. Is it such a bad thing? If newspapers go the way of the dodo, will we miss them?  If we turn to online editions, won’t that be a good thing for the environment? For many, the question itself is blasphemy. The ritual of reading a paper at the breakfast table, on the subway, at the cafe and wherever else is as important to some as breathing.

Beyond ruining people’s breakfasts and morning commutes, of course, print media’s demise will result in a significant loss of jobs (from journalists to delivery boys/girls and everyone in between). And while that might be an okay thing from the standpoint of the industry’s negative impact on the environment- cutting down trees, production, delivery, waste disposal- it’s not as clear cut as you might expect.

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Junk mail in the United States accounts for roughly 20% of all the world’s mail. Each year, more than 20 billion catalogs are produced in the United States alone. Many of them are unsolicited, most end up in a landfill, and until rececntly, almost all were made from the destruction of virgin forests. Groups like ForestEthics are working to change the way catalogs are produced and distributed, helping companies look at their catalogs with a view towards sustainability. In 2007, ForestEthics published a  progress report- their “naughty and nice” list- detailing which companies were most forward-thinking and which ones the most egregious offenders when it comes to mail catalogs.Topping the ‘nice’ list was Patagonia, which has long been at the fore-front of significant environmental initiatives. The catalog paper they use is made from 40% post-consumer recylced content and virgin content certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. Other companies on the ‘nice’ list included Victoria’s Secret, Williams-Sonoma, Dell, L.L. Bean, Timberland, Crate & Barrel, REI and J. Crew. The ‘naughtiest’ offender was Sears.

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Is downloading music good for the environment? Is paying your bills online socially responsible? How green is your CD- compact disc and certificate of deposit? When we stop to consider the ‘ecological backpack’ of the CD (compact disc) and that little plastic jewel case, it might just be that downloading our favorite band’s greatest hits is the greenest way to grow our music library.

The German scientist Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek coined the phrase ‘ecological backpack’ to describe the overall environmental impact of a product. In a 2006 article in The Guardian, Leo Hickman explains:

“Similar in thinking to a person’s ecological footprint, [a product’s ecological backpack] is a measure used to calculate the amount of resources - fuel, minerals, water etc - that must “be moved” throughout the full lifespan of a product. For example, a 10-gram wedding ring has an ecological backpack of five tons, whereas a 3kg laptop has a backpack of about 400kg.”

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