If talking about sustainable development vis-a-vis internet commerce and the use of paper, have You considered taking a wider perspective in account? For example, even if studies WOULD show that e-commerce does reduce the use of paper (as I see, there have been some works that cast some doubts on that fact), the overall impact of ecological cost of producing and constant renewing of ICT's and the infrastructure involved might still render the positive results (in terms of paper use) negative. I think it was in Dordoy, A. & Mellor, M. (2001). Ch 68 „Grassroots Environmental Movements: Mobilisation in an Information Age”. In „Manuel Castells. Volume III. From the Informational City to the Information Age” (2004), eds F. Webster & B. Dimitriou. London: Sage, pp 248-264, where the authors cited Harpold & Philip who said something along the lines "the environmental impact of producing ICTs is very hard to assess". They didnät get to the bottom of the problem though... Sincerely, Laur Kanger
-----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 _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/