Have you looked at The Myth of the Paperless Office (2001) by Abigail Sellen and Richard Harper. There is a review with publication details at http://www.techsoc.com/paperless.htm I looked at this a little while ago so can't remember the extent to which the influence of the internet, in particular, is examined. I do remember the book investigated the relationship between the development of information management technologies and the growth in paper use. To quote from the review above: "Figures show an almost linear increase in paper use in recent decades: the introduction of new technology does not get rid of paper; it shifts the ways in which it is used." There were tables and charts depicting the use of timber for paper products over the past couple decades, although being published in 2001 there aren't recent figures. I hope this is of some use. Glenn ******************************************** Glenn Pass PhD Candidate, Internet Studies Associate Lecturer, Information Studies Curtin University of Technology Perth, Western Australia -----Original Message----- From: Hang Ryeol Na [mailto:nhr24@hotmail.com] Sent: Sunday, 30 September 2007 9:35 AM To: air-l@listserv.aoir.org Subject: [Air-L] effect of Internet on paper consumption? Dear all, I am preparing to write a paper about the effect of internet commerce on paper consumption in terms of sustainable development. As there has been a lot of debate on whether the internet decreased or increased paper consumption, for example, paperless office, online bill and payment, etc. I am interested in what factors contributed to the increase and what others to the decrease. Do you have any information, or can you provide any resource of the data showing the effect of internet on paper consumption? If there are any statistics of companies which saved the cost by, for example, making the customers move from the traditional paper bill to online bill, it would be great. It would be even greater if any analysis is available of what made or did not make it possible to save the cost in such a way. I need to understand why there are both success and failure in such cases. My focus is on how to decrease the paper consumption with internet, or, whether it is feasible or not. Thanks for your consideration. Sincerely, Hang Ryeol Na _________________________________________________________________ Discover the new Windows Vista http://search.msn.com/results.aspx?q=windows+vista&mkt=en-US&form=QBRE