Ladies and gentlemen, there’s an elephant in the newsroom. In fact there are herds and herds of them, 3.4 million in all.
That number of the world’s largest living land animal is, on average, the equivalent of the weight of newsprint produced each year in the United States: 13.6 million tons.[i] Newsprint that is made of paper; paper that comes from trees.
Every day Americans buy 62 million newspapers, trashing 44 million of these. In one week, that is the equivalent of dumping 500,000 trees into a local landfill.[ii] At 18% of landfilled waste, “By far, newsprint is the largest single component in landfills.”[iii]
But this destruction of trees in the name of newsprint and the consequential dilemma for its disposal aren’t the only environmentally unfriendly practices that result from the production of our beloved newspapers and news magazines. Besides the deforestation that can result in soil erosion, habitat degradation, and less oxygen production, and besides its decomposition which can create methane – “a greenhouse gas with 21 times the heat trapping power of carbon dioxide”[iv] – the pulp and paper industry necessary to printing newspapers has been identified by the EPA as a major source of hazardous pollutants[v] and by the Department of Energy as the third greatest energy consuming industry in the U.S.[vi]
This environmental impact has not gone entirely overlooked, despite being vastly under-reported by the very media it would implicate. In response to environmentalist and consumer pressure and declining precious space in landfills, state and local governments began mandating the use of recycled paper in newsprint, though not news magazines – 95% of which use virgin paper.[vii] 13 states, including Missouri’s current quota of 50%, have mandates in place, while 12 others use voluntary statutes. Still, as these laws accounts for only half of the country, “less than one-third of all newsprint used in the United States is manufactured from recycled fiber.”[viii]
Yet for all the government regulation, new and emerging technology could play a far larger role as an impetus for change, albeit not likely in the name of environmental protection. As more and more news content is consumed and delivered online, a future where all newsprint media shifts to an online platform is not at all unimaginable or far off, as some news media have done so already.
Such a fundamental change of course in the news product and its delivery would have serious implications for the industry to be certain, but also just as notably for the environment. Such a scenario was the focus of Michael Toffel and Arpad Horvath’s study, “Environmental Implications of Wireless Technologies: News Delivery and Business Meetings.”[ix] Using a one-year subscription to the New York Times as a case study, they assumed two rates of recycled fiber content in the production of the newspaper, 50% and 100% (both of which exceed the Times’ current 28%). They also assumed half of the newspapers to be recycled after being read and the other half landfilled (current EPA estimates cite a 58% recycled return rate).
Their conclusion is an intuitive one. “Obtaining the news via newspapers incurs a greater environmental burden than loading news onto a PDA. This conclusion is robust to the choice of uploading news content to a PDA via wireless or wired Internet access and to whether a newspaper is read by one person or shared among 2.6 people (the current Times’ average).”
“Compared to reading the news loaded onto a PDA using a wireless or a wired method, reading the NYT as a newspaper results in the release of 32-140 times more CO2, several orders of magnitude more NOx and SOx, and the use of 26-185 times more water depending on whether a newspaper is read by 1 or 2.6 readers and the level of recycled content used in the newsprint.”
On the larger scale of national newspaper readership, the researchers predicted the effects of the aforementioned fundamental shift to online news consumption.
“Nationwide, newspapers average 2.2 readers per copy, for a total of 123 million daily newspaper readers. If a quarter of these readers were to switch from newspapers to obtaining the news on their PDA, the 30.8 million PDA users would generate 0.17 Tg of CO2 per year, a mere 2-3% of the 6-10 Tg of CO2 per year that would have resulted from the 14 million newspapers they no longer require.”
It may seem common sense that accessing news via the internet is better for the environment than reading a newspaper – even one made of 100% recycled paper and shared by more than one person -- but the extent to which it is better is worth considering; not to mention the cost-efficient side of an entirely online operation.
Thus, while the fate of newspapers is one that won’t likely be decided in the interest of the environment (few product decisions are in our post-industrial society), such a doomsday, whenever it may come, won’t be an entirely negative burial. That the environment stands to substantially benefit from online news content can only further its cause and the call for change.
To be certain, the major metropolitans of the industry are not at all interested in such an outcome. One look at recent investments in printing plants indicates as much, such as the Kansas City Star’s recent spending of more than $200 million for their state-of-the-art presses.
Nevertheless, when considering the ethics of any business or industry, particularly such a major institution as the news media, the environmental impact that business/industry has is paramount. I would argue that in journalism, minimizing the effect newspapers have on the environment should be just as much a tenet of our ethics as accountability, transparency, and truth.
That the technology now exists to effectively alleviate -- or dare I say eliminate – the environmental cost of producing and delivering newsprint, it would be morally wrong and nearsighted to not at least weight the option. Or we can go on ignoring the 3.4 million elephants before our eyes on the off-chance no one else notices the environmental destruction either.
Newspapers longevity shouldn’t come at the expense of the environment’s, nor should increasing quality and revenue depend on increasing exploitation. In the words of Toffel and Horvath, “information and communication technologies (are) touted as an opportunity to reduce society’s overall environmental impacts.”
[i] Newsprint Production From Secondary Fiber; James Best and Keith Kirkpatrick, http://www.p2pays.org/ref/15/14205.pdf
[ii] Bergen County Utilities Authority, Solid Waste Management; http://www.bcua.org/SolidWaste_Recycling.htm
[iii] Newsprint Production From Secondary Fiber; James Best and Keith Kirkpatrick, http://www.p2pays.org/ref/15/14205.pdf
[iv] Why a Postconsumer Recycled Fiber Goal?; GreenPress Initiative Organization; http://www.greenpressinitiative.org/documents/Why%20a%20Postconsumer%20Recycled%20Fiber%20Goal.doc
[v] Wood Consumption; Natural Resources Defense Council, February 1997; http://www.nrdc.org/cities/recycling/recyc/chap4.asp
[vi] The Choice: Recycled vs. Virgin Paper; Christina Claassen, 2001; http://www.globaljournalist.org/archive/Magazine/choice.html
[vii] The Choice: Recycled vs. Virgin Paper; Christina Claassen, 2001; http://www.globaljournalist.org/archive/Magazine/choice.html
[viii] Wood Consumption; Natural Resources Defense Council, February 1997; http://www.nrdc.org/cities/recycling/recyc/chap4.asp
[ix] Environmental Implications of Wireless Technologies: News Delivery and Business Meetings; Michael W. Toffel and Arpad Horvath, 2004; http://www.haas.berkeley.edu/responsiblebusiness/documents/wireless_asap.pdf
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