E-mail’s Contribution to Total Paper Consumption on the U.C. Berkeley Campus: An Investigation of the Printing Behavior of both Students and Staff Patrick Riley Abstract Digital technologies, such as the Internet, electronic libraries, and electronic mail (commonly called ‘e-mail’) have fundamental opportunities to reduce paper use. However, digital technologies also provide ample opportunities for vast waste of resources, such as paper. Despite the believable promises of a “paperless, digital future”, paper consumption trends have indicated exponentially increases in the United States (Abramovitz et al.). The fact that modern technologies have greatly increased the amount of paper output suggests a tendency toward maintaining both digital and paper copies of documents and communications. The consequences of this behavior could exacerbate our already heavy reliance on national resources, namely forests, and possibly be solely responsible for the devastation of natural environments worldwide. By random social surveys, this study provides an examination of printing output dedicated to digital technology (specifically electronic mail) on the University of California, Berkeley campus. An interpretation of this study follows, outlining environmental and social implications, suggestions for future legislative policy, and recommendations for future investigations of printing behavior. Survey results suggest that printed electronic mail is responsible for 10% of the total paper used by U.C. Berkeley students, and 14% of the total paper used by U.C. Berkeley campus employees.Introduction Digital technology, such as the Internet, electronic libraries, and electronic mail (commonly referred to as ‘e-mail’) have fundamental opportunities to increase global efficiency in everything from communication, education and commerce exchange. However, digital technologies also provide ample opportunities for worldwide inefficiencies, such as dramatically increased paper use. Digital technology allows computer users to copy, store, transfer, organize and analyze an enormous amount of information in a fraction of the time that these same processes were performed prior to digital technology, increasing efficiency dramatically. E-mail can support e-mail address lists, so that an individual or organization can send e-mail to a list of individual addresses, other organizations or even other list groups. A digital computer user (sender) can e-mail a message or even send a copy of an entire digital book to over thousands of other computer users (recipients) in seconds, whereas, given the same amount the time, the sender could make very few copies of the same document using non-digital technologies, such as a photocopy machine. Yet, with this increased time-efficiency for information utilization by digital technology, increased inefficiency or deadweight loss is equally possible. Using the same example, the thousands of recipients could all individually print out the sender’s document on paper seconds after they have received it, greatly increasing the amount of paper consumed. It should also be noted that with e-mail, one could potentially correspond with any one of the expanding hundreds of millions of other e-mail users worldwide. Another variation of e-mail lists are e-mail-based discussion groups or list servers. Participants can send e-mail to a central mailing list server, and the messages are broadcasted to the other participants. With the hundreds of thousands of discussion groups and list servers used by schools, many fields of specialized industry, administration, and the general internet population, it is not uncommon for a single e-mail message to have thousands of recipients. Also, messages can be easily forwarded. A great example of this is an e-mail that an M.I.T. graduate student sent to three friends regarding his personal correspondences with the Nike Corporation. These friends forwarded the message, and eventually, the same e-mail was sent to 86 million users all across the world (Peretti 2001). The consequences of this, even if just a small percentage of the recipients print their e-mail, could greatly increase paper consumption. According to a 1999 study of numerous business offices, the introduction of e-mail has coincided with an increase in paper consumption by 40% on average in less than five years (Greengard 1999).Figure 1: Business Increase in Paper Output Due to Email (Workforce 1999)47182940454801020304050601995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000* 2001*Year(*future projections)Percentage (%) History shows that corporate business printing of e-mail has been steadily increasing over the last few years, and indicates the possibility that it will continue to increase (Figure 1). The increasing amounts of paper use require additional sources of paper-producing materials, inevitably placing more pressure on the use of natural resources. Previous examinations, like the 1999 study noted, have found that e-mail in particular has been responsible for a sharp rise in paper consumption, but only business offices have been examined. However, attention should also be given to other paper-intensive environments, such as college campuses. Considering the University of California, Berkeley contributed 10 million pounds of office paper to landfills in 1998, it is clear that the campus consumes an enormous amount of paper (Cockrell, 1998). How much of this paper is printed e-mail on the U.C. Berkeley campus? By random social surveys of both students and campus administrative personal, this study will bring to light that printed e-mail presently contributes a notable amount (5-10%) of the Berkeley campus paper use. Methods In an effort to more effectively design the social survey to fulfill the specific research objectives, several pilot studies were performed, and modifications were made to the surveymethods and questions. This was necessary to further test the precision, expressions, objectivity, relevance and communication of the survey. Some questions from the initial pilot surveys were eliminated, revised, simplified, or concentrated. A preliminary survey was then conducted and suggested the potential of e-mail greatly contributing to the total paper consumption for U.C. Berkeley students. The pilot survey questions were tested on ten students in Sproul Hall, during the evening (5 to 6 P.M.) of randomly selected weekdays. A definition of electronic
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