Many of us have viewed and loved the Idea series of ads on going paperless where a tree-incarnated Abhishek plots to save his fraternity. This post is a peek into the realities of the newspaper industry's future, its implications on sustainability and the imperatives for the industry in India.
Newyork times ran an article on April 21 suggesting Ten Ways to ‘Go Green’ for marking the Earth Day. In this they suggested to shun papers as one of the methods in your personal effort to go green. As if they were setting up the tone for what was to come next. At a conference in London in the second week of September, Arthur Sulzberger Jr conceded that someday the New York Times Company will be forced to stop publishing a printed paper.The economics of the online news business will not support the infrastructure or newsroom that the printed paper supports. It is more of a financial decision. As Mashable reports "As newspaper circulation continues to fall, so do newspaper revenues. All told, losses amount to 27.2% or ad revenue lost year-over-year between 2008 and 2009. More and more consumers are using the web to stay updated about current events; in fact, in a poll earlier this year, only 21.7% of Mashable readers said they got their news from a newspaper. "The newspaper industry across the globe has been bleeding(in India the debate on whether it is floundering or flourishing still continues but undeniably new models of delivery are evolving) due to the migration of the readers to the web-sphere. With link sharing sites like Twitter and Facebook, news spread fast. The necessity of news papers as channels to analyze news and provide detailed coverage is being fulfilled by various websites, blogs and citizen reporters. The consumer preferance has also been shifting on the reding habits. It is as if students, professors, readers and universities are rebelling against the weighty — and wasteful — books. Stanford University's brand new physics and engineering library is advertised as "bookless"; relying almost solely on digital material. Free and downloadable textbooks are at the heart of the growing "open educational resources" movement that seeks to make education more available and more affordable.
While it may be a pure financial decision on part of Newyork, for environment it is good news. As Sulzeberg admits the web costs are no where near the print costs where the investment in the capital equipments can run into billions. News consumption will not recede in its importance. Writers and editors are being challenged to find new and creative ways to tell stories. Newyork times which excels in that and ensures honest news is brought out will continue to be a formidable post. The reputation enjoyed by newspapers is far more trustworthy and reliable than that of any other mass communication medium. Newspapers are still the primary and at times the only source of news available. Especially in India, people have a certain sense of loyalty towards the paper they read, and that’s the relationship that’s hard to be cracked.
But consumer behavior shifting towards more sustainable reading models will just enable a shift away from the wasteful paper. The average age of readers of the New York Times print edition is 42, Sulzberger says, and that hasn't changed in 10 years. The average age of readers of its Internet edition is 37, which shows that the group is also managing to recruit young readers for both the printed version and Web site. The same trend is visible in India as well. As reported in The View paper Declining readership(of Indian Newspaper) in no way means declining demand. The only reason for the publications calling quits being the high fixed cost of print publishing, making the major metro newspaper business model unsustainable in a world that increasingly wants information to be free.
As suggested by Selzeberg, Newyork times will move towards an online licensing and fee based model, most probably by 2015. Some reports predict that the web-based revenue could be as big as 30% for NYT. The Times from the group signed a deal with Microsoft to distribute the paper through a software program called Times Reader, Sulzberger says. The software enables users to conveniently read the paper on screens, mainly laptops. When you sign-up at the New York times website you are made to sign-up for the Times Reader as well, which makes it extremly easy to share content on the web.There is a revolution brewing to enable a paperless world. Shelly Blake-Plock runs this amazing blog that tracks how a paperless teaching methodology can be enabled. Several websites are cropping up which enable several work that we did with paper to be done in a paperless environment. Below is an interesting list of sites with more generic usage to reduce paper, as taken from this blog:
- Use a site like mindmapping Mindmeister for brainstorming without white-paper boarding
- LiveBinders is a great tool for Web 2.0 servers to a virtual 3-Ring Binder you can gather resources and use for the presentation inside.
- You can also use Microsoft OneNote or http://notebook.zoho.com
While the debate continues on whether removing paper is really that green as it is touted to be, the news paper industry has been responsible enough to embrace practices to improve their sustainability footprint. Driven by publisher commitments to increase the recycled fiber content of their newsprint, and producer investments in paper de-inking infrastructure, the US industry average more than tripled from just 10 percent in 1989 to more than 35 percent in 2006. Environmental impact estimates were made using the Environmental Defense Fund Paper Calculator. For more information visit http://www.papercalculator.org. This is a great resource to see how you can reduce the impact on environment even while continuing to use paper.
Consumption of paper in India, which is only 9 kg per capita, is low compared to paper consumption by countries like the US (250 to 300 kg per capita) and China (40 kg per capita). This is godd news. But it can be great. 40% of the waste produced in India is just paper. In India only 30 percent of waste-paper comes for recycling rest 70 percent goes in garbage. While in US 90 percent of waste-paper is used in recycling. IARPMA projects the demand for paper in India to reach 28 million tonnes by 2025. If we were to reach China’s current level of recovery, then we should be recovering 8.3 million tonnes of waste paper for reuse by then. While the production of recycled paper has increased approximately three folds from just 13% in 1985 to nearly 40% in India, the potential is much larger.http://www.dare.co.in/opportunities/energy-environment/business-from-waste-paper.htm. As reported by DNA every ton of paper recycled saves more than 3.3 cubic yards of landfill space.But our larger goal should be to reduce use of Paper. If each child saves one sheet of paper a day, then 40,000 trees are saved per year by students alone!
Give it a thought and get involved in the cause. One of the best ways to participate is to introduce a recycling program. Olive Earth will shortly be launching its community recycling program. Keep checking back on this space. Schools, colleges, cooperative societies and apartments can collect their paper waste on a daily basis, go to a nearby recycling centre and make new paper that can be used for customised printing such as for Lesson Plans, Birthday cards, Invitations, posters and other such purposes. Paper recycling can provide great education value for kids in developing their creativity, old newspapers can be recycled into products such as boxes, file cartons, pencil barrels, grocery bags, cellulose insulation materials, and many more diverse products.
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Sunday, 19 September 2010
