[LINK] Environmental impact of web versus print

[Tom Worthington]

Perhaps AGIMO could carry out a study on: "Are 
web pages better for the environment than paper documents?".

I would assume that replacing all the printed 
reports the government produces with copies on 
the web would be good for the environment by 
reducing paper use and cost of transporting the 
documents. But to view a web page you have to 
have a computer which consumes resources to make, 
operate and dispose of. Do the savings on the paper offset the computer costs?

On Wednesday Drs Faltenbacher and Gediga talked 
on "Life Cycle Analysis – A Tool to Understand 
Sustainability" in Canberra at the Australian National University:

"During this seminar they will give an overview 
of their work, their methodologies and then some 
detailed results and analysis of a couple of case 
studies. Life cycle analysis is vital in 
discussing the cradle to grave impact of 
sustainable energy technologies." 
<http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/2006/09/life-cycle-analysis-20-sep-canberra.html>

They uses some software 
<http://www.pe-consulting-group.com/software.html> 
to check the environmental effects of production 
processes and whole companies. I asked them if 
they applied the same process to their own 
company and they said they did (having to fly to 
Australia to give a talk pushed up their greenhouse gas emissions).

They use the ISO14000 Series of Standards 
on  Environmental Management Systems. These are 
like the ISO 9000 quality management  standards 
and lend themselves to simple form filling 
automation <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_14001>.



Tom Worthington FACS HLM tom.worthington at tomw.net.au Ph: 0419 496150
Director, Tomw Communications Pty Ltd            ABN: 17 088 714 309
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617                http://www.tomw.net.au/
Director, ACS Communications Tech Board   http://www.acs.org.au/ctb/
Visiting Fellow, ANU      Blog: http://www.tomw.net.au/blog/atom.xml