This Environmental Advice Really Blows!

Magzter's green claims contain enough BS to fertilize an entire forest.

So here we are, ready to celebrate the last Earth Day before President Trump outlaws climate change. Or builds a wall around it. Or sends it back to Kenya where it came from.

Whatever. In any case, it’s time for the Dead Tree Edition Research Institute’s annual look at dubious environmental achievements.We have two awards to hand out this year:

The Toshiba Award for Shameless Greenwashing goes to Magzter, one of the world's leading sellers of digital magazines, for its bold, unfounded claim that it has "saved" more than 92,000 trees.

Nowhere does its web site provide any substantiation for its claims or how they were calculated. Nor does Magzter reveal anything about its own environmental footprint or policies.

How paper is really made

What makes the claims especially hypocritical is that Magzter makes its money from selling the content of magazine publishers. So it's basically accusing its business partners of killing trees.

I'll bet some of those business partners, including environmental leaders like Hearst and Time Inc., are far more scrupulous than Magzter about their environmental practices. They're certainly more transparent.

Magzter's claims are reminiscent of Toshiba's infamous shoot-ourselves-in-the-foot National No-Print Day campaign from four years ago that was supposed to raise awareness “of the impact printing has on our planet” but was full of unsubstantiated claims and outright falsehoods. That was especially embarrassing because Toshiba makes presses and other products for the printing industry -- and has an environmental record that's almost as sloppy as its accounting.

Advice to Toshiba, Magzter, and their greenwashing ilk: Read this Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article about how declines in Wisconsin's paper industry are threatening the health of its forests. Or study TwoSides' new infographic "Busting Myths About How Paper Is Made."

The not-so-coveted This Really Blows Award goes to the folks who've been touting the Dyson Airblade hand dryer as a green alternative to paper towels.

The Airblade is apparently the most energy-efficient hand dryer on the market. And it's powerful enough that users rarely have that "Damn, my hands are still wet" experience that causes them to wipe their hands on their pants.

But some of the research touting it as a green alternative to paper towels has been flawed. Like the Rochester Institute of Technology study that assumed the paper towels contained only virgin fiber and were transported from the mill by truck (not rail) -- and that didn't account for whether the mill used hydro power or other carbon-neutral sources of energy. In other words, the study didn't consider the possibility of switching to more environmentally friendly paper.

The real trouble, however, arose with a recent Journal of Applied Microbiology article revealing that, as Popular Science put it, Airblades were "spraying 1,300 times more viral plaques (clumps of viruses) than paper towels, and sending some of them nearly 10 feet from the dryer itself." That's on top of an earlier study indicating that jet-air dryers like the Airblade "spread 27 times more bacteria than paper towels."

So don't try to go paperless by switching from paper towels to hand dryers. You'll just end up using more tissue paper to blow your nose or more toilet paper to -- oh, never mind.

Other articles featuring Dead Tree Edition's offbeat perspective on Earth Day and print media include:

• Condoms to the Rescue, and 5 Other Novel Ideas for Saving the Forests 
• A Kick in the Listicles: 7 Reasons Digital Media Are Inferior to Print 
• Flushed With Success: This Print-Based Ad Campaign Is an Extra-Base Hit

A Kick in the Listicles: 7 Reasons Digital Media Are Inferior to Print

It's no wonder a Viagra TV ad features a press operator, not a web geek.

In honor of the second annual International Print Day, today the Dead Tree Edition Research Institute and Tiddlywinks Club delves into why print -- specifically, printed magazines -- are better than digital media. The list is endless, but because yesterday was the Institute's seventh birthday (Here's my first blog post, from Oct. 13, 2008. It kind of sucks.), we are limiting the list to seven:

1) Sexiness
I have a confession to make: At my day job, those of us who work on the magazines love to throw around suggestive print terms like "blow-ins," "dot whacking," and "droop." It drives the web guys crazy because they think we're having all the fun while they can only discuss such exciting concepts as viewability and third-party data.

Our attractive female art director really got their attention the other day when she was looking at a paper sample and shouted, "This is too limp. I need something with more stiffness and bulk!" We've even got the webbies convinced that "trim" and "bleed" are some kind of kinky print terms a la 50 Shades of Grayscale.

Let's face it, folks: The web has listicles, but print has balls.

2) 3-year-olds
You can't break the screen on a magazine.

3) Advertising
The digital geniuses have been doing web ads for 20 years and still haven't figured out how to make any money from them without annoying the hell out of everybody and crashing our browsers.

Magazines are now guaranteeing results for advertisers.

Meanwhile, the good old right-hand ad page next to a left-hand editorial page performs just fine, without popups, popunders, popovers, Pop Tarts, or other digitally enhanced annoyances.

4) Scent strips
Ladies, here is today's money-saving tip: Instead of buying expensive perfume, just subscribe to three fashion magazines. It will probably cost you only $15 a year (Sad, but true) and provide a wide array of scented ads.

Just open a scent strip, touch it to your body, and re-close the strip for later use. You'll have enough scents ads to keep you smelling pretty every day of the year (unless you're like the girl Mr. Tree briefly dated in high school, who didn't know the difference between "dab" and "bathe." I still get flashbacks when I get a whiff of Charlie perfume's distinctive dying-skunk scent.)

5) Flies
Ever swatted one with an iPad?


6) Privacy
If you subscribe to a magazine, the publisher knows your name and mailing address and has some SWAGs (Sophisticated Wild Ass Guesses) about your gender, age, and household income.

But on the web, each page you visit and each link you click is fair game for the ad techies who track your every move and sell the data to the highest bidder so you can be "served" ads that are specially selected just for you. They also make it convenient for hackers to learn about those naughty web sites you've visited so they can "serve" you with blackmail attempts that are specially customized just for you.

7) Retargeting
If you look at a magazine ad for a pair of pants and decide not to buy, you can move on with your life. But look at those same pants in an e-store and they'll stalk you for the next two weeks in retargeted ads wherever you go on the web.

Haunted pants really freak me out. They remind me of that awful 70s song "You Make My Pants Want To Get Up and Dance."

Footnote: I know that some of my longtime fans (all 20 of you) were hoping for a reprise of last year's Ten Ways to Celebrate International Print Day, but this year I chose to celebrate in my own private way: Early this morning, I snuck into the bathrooms at the HQ of blatant greenwasher Capital Bank, emptied the toilet-paper holders, and plastered them with "Go Paperless, Go Green" stickers.

Flushed With Success: This Print-Based Ad Campaign Is an Extra-Base Hit

Maybe pine tar would help

I’m glad that great celebration of greenwashing known as Earth Day is finally over.

Bad turned to worse when my bank even urged me to “go green” (i.e. put more green into its CEO's wallet) by switching my statements and payments from mail to the coal-fired Internet.

But instead of getting pissed off, we here at the Dead Tree Edition Research Institute decided to take the offensive (some would say “very offensive”) and highlight yet another example of what print can do that digital media can’t.

Today’s edition of “Just Try That With an iPad” comes to you courtesy of a longtime Dead Tree Edition reader, who apparently has the unusual hobby of shooting photos in crowded public restrooms. He leaked news to us of a clever print campaign, placed in the urinals at a minor league baseball park in Trenton, New Jersey, that simply cannot be replicated via digital media.

O, say can you pee?

From what he observed, the campaign had what the web geeks would call “high reader engagement” and 100% “viewability.” Some reputable web sites struggle to achieve 70% viewability.

When was the last time you saw a digital ad that actually got guys thinking about whether their trouble with “balls and strikes” merited medical attention? And note that the marketing wizz behind this wee print campaign got the target market’s attention without even resorting to any high-tech tricks like HAUBs.

Yeah, you know, HAUBs – heat-activated urinal billboards. Sure, it sounds nuts (sorry), but that really is a thing.The message on these little billboards isn’t revealed until some “P” is added to the H-A-U-B, thanks to the magic of heat-activated inks.

Basketball has lots of dribblers. Just sayin'.

Can e-ink do that?

Nor did the urologists’ campaign take advantage of the latest paper breakthrough -- urine-activated origami distress signals. (I swear I am not making this up.)

A team of researchers recently announced it is coating sheets of standard copy paper (“uncoated freesheet” to us print geeks) with special microbes that get excited in the presence of “golden showers.”

After a few well-placed folds to make a tetrahedron, plus what polite baseball fans would call a visit to the dugout, a single sheet of the paper will broadcast a distress signal. Probably something like: “Alert! This dude needs serious help – can’t tell a tetrahedron from a toilet!”

Target market: Guys who can't hit the target.  

With advances flowing so fast in print and paper technologies, pretty soon we’ll have HAUBs that will sense when a guy has been “at bat” too long or is having trouble "hitting the strike zone."

Then it will send out a distress signal that schedules an appointment for him to see a urologist the next morning.

 You got an app that can do that?

Further thoughts on Earth Day and print media:

• For a more serious way to fight anti-print greenwashing, check out Two Sides' cool new infographic, Paper and Sustainable Forestry.
• Condoms to the Rescue, and 5 Other Novel Ideas for Saving the Forests 
• 5 Brutally Honest Green-Themed Promotions I'd Like To See 
• Ten Ways to Celebrate International Print Day

No Thrillah in Manilla: Paperless 2013 Founder Going Down for the Count

Manilla, a Paperless 2013 sponsor that aimed to save people from the horrors of printed and mailed bills, is throwing in the towel, according to TechCrunch.

Unable, in the words of its own ads, to get its "s**t toghether," the three-year-old Hearst unit will start winding down on June 30 and shut down completely on Sept. 30. (The 2013 article Killah in Manilla: Hearst's Green Reputation Tarnished by Subsidiary examined the company's questionable environmental claims.)

Manilla, along with Google, was one of seven sponsors of the controversial Paperless 2013 greenwashing campaign that was supposedly about helping the environment but was actually about bringing the sponsors more green stuff.

Without providing any data or analysis, the anti-paper campaign claimed that businesses become more environmentally friendly when they switch to cloud computing and other paperless processes.

The campaign used the hashtag "Paperless 2013" in social media, but environmentalists and print advocates staged a "hashtag takeover" to counter the campaign's self-serving and misleading claims.

Manilla's CEO said its sponsorship was “truly representative of Manilla’s overall mission ... to help improve the environment by reducing the overall use of paper.” But like the campaign, Manilla never documented how its services helped the environment -- or revealed anything about its own environmental practices.

The start-up's claims were an odd departure from those of its parent company, which is one of the world's largest buyers of publication papers and which has provided extensive reporting of its aggressive and carefully documented environmental efforts.

I'll state my position again: There are legitimate reasons to convert some paper-based functions to digital media. But don't make assertions about "going green" by going paperless without providing evidence, because digital media have a significant environmental footprint.

It's A Case of L.L. Beanwash

The L.L. Bean brand used to connote squeaky-clean business practices with a heavy dose of earth friendliness. No more.

The venerable outdoorsy Bean brand is now connected to a rather egregious greenwashing effort – a crude attempt to squeeze extra profits by making unfounded environmental claims.

“Go Paperless and help keep the world green,” advises a recent promotion to holders of L.L. Bean Visa cards. “Paperless statements are . . . better for the environment. Eliminating paper statements conserves trees and energy,” advises an email, without providing a shred of evidence or even a link to anything backing up the claim.

The real culprit may be Barclaycard, the banking organization that actually issues the cards in a partnership with Bean. Barclaycard is apparently behind the promotion – and the business whose coffers would presumably become “greener” if more customers opted out of printed, mailed statements.

The Barclay bank conglomerate’s somewhat sketchy sustainability reporting provides no evidence that its digital processing is inherently more earth friendly than ink on paper. Its main response to climate change is the purchase of carbon credits to offset its 1-million-tons plus annual emissions of greenhouse gases. A fair portion of those emissions apparently were the result of its data centers, which consumed 332 gigawatt hours of energy in 2011, a 4% increase over 2010.

And what about Barclay’s progress in 2012? Who knows – it hasn’t published its environmental data for last year yet. (Note to Barclay: We’re now in the second half of 2013. It’s time to reveal what you did to the earth last year.)

Bean’s environmental efforts – including the use of paper with recycled and sustainably forested fiber, green buildings, and participation in the EPA’s voluntary Climate Leaders program – seem exemplary. But, like Barclay, Bean's sustainability reporting is far less detailed or revealing than what’s typically published by much smaller and less profitable printing and paper companies that are being indirectly slandered by the "Beanwash” campaign.

By allowing its name to be used in such a tawdry fashion, Bean is damaging its credibility and reputation. Could it be another Toshiba, which made unfounded anti-print green claims that ultimately failed to distract attention from its shady environmental record? (See 9 Lessons From Toshiba's No-Print-Day Debacle.)

The good news is that print-oriented industries are fighting back. The latest effort is the Ecographic Challenge issued by the U.S. branch of Two Sides. The non-profit advocacy group will award a $2,500 cash prize to the designer of the infographic that best demonstrates “the sustainability of print and paper in a way that’s fun and easy to understand.” Details are here.

To prime the pump, Deborah Corn of Print Media Centr has created three ecographics that challenge vague claims about switching from print to the coal-fired internet. My favorite is this fun “Save the Batteries! Harvest a Tree” message.

For further reading:

• Going Paperless Doesn't Mean Going Green, The New York Times Proves
• Google Using Blatant Greenwash To Promote New Catalog App
• Killah in Manilla: Hearst's Green Reputation Tarnished by Subsidiary

I Knew I Was in the Production Department When . . .

I toured a publishing company recently that had no signs marking the various departments, but I didn't need a sign to know when I was among the folks who buy paper and plan print projects.

Most departments looked pretty much the same -- people sitting at computers. OK, you could spot the designers because they had Macs and big monitors, but otherwise the differences were subtle -- a bit more phone chatter in ad sales, more arguments in editorial, more gossip in circulation.

As an environmentalist, I noticed that every department had recycling bins. And whether people worked mostly in old media or new media, they used those bins the same: as garbage cans.

Then I rounded a corner and saw it -- a recycling bin with a cover that had two holes, indicating it was for bottles and cans. And it actually contained only bottles and cans!

"For paper only"
Nearby was another recycling bin with a sign saying, "For paper only." And people were actually obeying the sign!

I knew right away I was in the production department. (Some of my colleagues in the industry like to call it the operations department because these days they're also doing things like preparing mailings, building web pages, or selling reprints. And some like to call it the manufacturing department, which really throws off the people who cold-call on behalf of factory consultants, only to find that American magazine publishers outsource all of their manufacturing.)

Anyway, this was not an isolated incident. I consistently find that the people in the industry who really care about environmental issues are the ones who buy paper or put ink on it.

They're the only ones you'll hear talking about sustainable forestry, carbon footprint, and the differences between pre-consumer and post-consumer waste (a distinction unique to North America). They understand that forestry industries can benefit the environment, or harm it, and they often wrestle with how to make their companies' paper purchases and other practices more sustainable.

The "print is dead" gang
Meanwhile, the "print is dead" types ignorantly assume they're saving trees, oblivious to the environmental footprints of the web and digital devices. And they rarely lift a finger to make their work any greener.

A similar dichotomy shows up in government. It's no accident that the U.S. Postal Service, the nation's primary distributor of printed pieces, has been far more active on the sustainability front than any other federal agency. There's something about handling printed products that makes people and organizations more environmentally aware and inspires them to take responsibility

As I noted last week, the dichotomy occurs even at Hearst Corporation, arguably one of the world's greenest large companies. (See Killah in Manilla: Hearst's Green Reputation Tarnished by Subsidiary.)

Hearst's traditional publishing people have meticulously documented the fiber sourcing of the company's magazine paper, pressured paper suppliers to use more sustainable forestry, led industry efforts to make the supply chain greener, and even installed a worm farm at one office. But then an all-digital subsidiary called Manilla ignorantly claimed that its involvement in the "Paperless 2013" campaign will "help improve the environment."

You wanna bet which part of Hearst -- the production department or Manilla -- makes the best use of its recycling bins?

Related articles:

• The Takeover of Paperless 2013: How a grassroots guerrilla army is fighting back against the greenwashing sponsored by Manilla, Google and other companies.
• Who is Really Behind #Paperless2013?: Can the anti-greenwashing forces claim partial victory? 
• OK, Johnny, Now Greenwash Your Hands: Another anti-paper effort based on false premises. And speaking of drying your hands, don't miss this gem: Increased Incidence of Gastroenteritis and The Flu - Could the Solution be Hand Drying With Paper Towels?

Killah in Manilla: Hearst's Green Reputation Tarnished by Subsidiary

Update: No Thrillah in Manilla: Paperless 2013 Founder Going Down for the Count


Hearst Corporation has earned a reputation as a truly green company by systematically measuring, revealing, and minimizing its environmental impacts – until now.

A subsidiary of Hearst – one of the world’s largest buyers of publication papers – is among seven corporate sponsors along with Google of the controversial Paperless 2013 promotion. That campaign has come under criticism (See The Takeover of Paperless 2013) for unsubstantiated claims that organizations become more environmentally friendly when they switch to cloud computing and other paperless processes.

Manilla, a Hearst unit that offers an online bill-management process, is not just guilty of greenwashing by association. Manilla’s CEO said this month that the company’s sponsorship of Paperless 2013 is “truly representative of Manilla’s overall mission ... to help improve the environment by reducing the overall use of paper.”

Manilla ad

Like Paperless 2013, Manilla presents no evidence that its processes help the environment. In fact, its web site reveals nothing about its environmental footprint or programs. That’s a far cry from the practices of the parent company, which owns such leading media brands as Good Housekeeping, Cosmopolitan, Road & Track, A&E Network, and the Houston Chronicle.

Hearst doesn’t just claim that its headquarters “is the most environmentally friendly office tower in New York City history.” It underwent the stringent process of having the innovative building LEED-certified with a Gold rating.

Hearst paper policies

Dead Tree Edition cited Hearst in 2009 as one of “the real leaders in making U.S. magazines greener” because of its multi-faceted work on such matters as encouraging sustainable forestry and promoting the recycling of magazines.

Documentation and transparency have been hallmarks of Hearst’s efforts. When it set up the Hearst Sustainable Forestry Initiative in 2004, it says it found that 38% of the fiber for its magazines was from certified fiber.

“By modifying our purchasing strategy and working proactively with our suppliers, we were able to increase this level to 75% by December 2009. We continue to have a goal of 80%,” says the company’s annual “Being Green” report. It also says it is not averse to “changing mills or suppliers when certification percentages and targets are unacceptable.”

Methinks that Manilla’s vague, self-serving claim about helping the environment does not represent the new Hearst philosophy but is rather a case of the startup division not absorbing its parent's culture. Manilla could learn a few lessons from its not-so-paperless sister companies about business practices that promote healthy forests and other measurable environmental benefits.

Methinks, to paraphrase a Manilla ad, that when it comes to environmental claims Manilla needs to get its “s**t together.”

The Takeover of Paperless 2013

A group of companies including Google recently created the Paperless 2013 campaign to promote the use of online solutions, but unsubstantiated environmental claims caused the program to backfire.

The campaign went viral in the past few days, with hundreds of Twitter messages a day using the hashtag “#paperless2013.” But the tweets are running roughly 10 to 1 against the campaign, with most criticizing it for implying that digital media are always greener than paper-based media without providing any facts.

Welcome to a protest tool for the 21st Century – the hashtag takeover. I didn’t invent the concept, but I think I’m the first to use the term (which is ironic given my lack of social-media savvy. My Facebook page has cobwebs from neglect.)

The tactic sprang up in June as one of the grassroots responses to Toshiba’s ill-fated No Print Day. Toshiba was using "#NoPrintDay" to promote its gimmick, but defenders of print turned that hashtag into a

Celebrating Yes Print Day!

In celebration of Yes Print Day!, which was originally called National No-Print Day, we offer a collection of Dead Tree Edition articles about the print medium. Here's information about what makes print special, how printing stacks up environmentally against electronic communications, and how to make print greener:

• 10 Questions About Toshiba's No-Print Day  
• Going Paperless Doesn't Mean Going Green, The New York Times Proves   
• Printed Magazines or Digital Magazines: Do We Have To Choose?  
• 34 Tricks Print Mags Can Do That Apps Can’t
• Smackdown: Printed Editions vs. Digital Editions  
• Google Using Blatant Greenwash To Promote New Catalog App 
• Newspapers Are Greener Than Web News, Says Environmental Expert
• Cutting some trees but saving the forest   
• Three, or Maybe Four, Green Magazine Pioneers
• Green Publishing Quiz

And, finally, for some print-related fun: Phone-Sex Service Gets Boost from Lands' End, International Paper. As of earlier today, eHow and Green City Times were among the web sites still touting (800) 879-9777 as the number to call for information about how to recycle cardboard.

Going Paperless Doesn't Mean Going Green, The New York Times Proves

Perhaps we can finally say goodbye to those simplistic "Go green, go paperless" promotional campaigns.

There's nothing particularly green about the massive data centers that store the internet's data, The New York Times revealed this past weekend after in-depth investigation. Data centers waste electricity and spew pollutants in a way that "is sharply at odds with its [the information industry's] image of sleek efficiency and environmental friendliness," the lengthy but clearly written "Power, Pollution, and the Internet" says.

"The industry has long argued that computerizing business transactions and everyday tasks like banking and reading library books has the net effect of saving energy and resources." But data centers use more electricity than the paper industry, according to the The Times.

Among other highlights of the article:

• "Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner, interviews and documents show. Online companies typically run their facilities at maximum capacity around the clock, whatever the demand."
• "The pollution from data centers has increasingly been cited by the authorities for violating clean air regulations, documents show. In Silicon Valley, many data centers appear on the state government’s Toxic Air Contaminant Inventory, a roster of the area’s top stationary diesel polluters."
• Data centers use "only 6 percent to 12 percent of the electricity powering their servers to perform computations. The rest was essentially used to keep servers idling and ready in case of a surge in activity that could slow or crash their operations."
• Most of the data are created by consumers. "With no sense that data is physical or that storing it uses up space and energy, those consumers have developed the habit of sending huge data files back and forth, like videos and mass e-mails with photo attachments."

Related articles:  

• OK, Johnny, Now Greenwash Your Hands  
• 10 Questions About Toshiba's No-Print Day
• Google Using Blatant Greenwash To Promote New Catalog App  
• Newspapers Are Greener Than Web News, Says Environmental Expert 
• Smackdown: Printed Editions vs. Digital Editions  
• Environmental Impact of Paper Goes Way Beyond Cutting Trees

9 Lessons From Toshiba's No-Print Day Debacle

Was it the negative feedback from printing-industry customers?

Or maybe seeing its "#noprintday" hashtag taken over by critics who screamed "Greenwash!"?

Or perhaps it flinched when the industry it attacked held up the mirror to its own questionable environmental record. (As the old cheer goes, "U-G-L-Y, You ain't got not alibi. You're ug-LY!")

For whatever reason, a U.S. arm of Toshiba pulled the plug today on its National No-Print Day campaign. Michael Makin, President and CEO of Printing Industries of America, announced the news this morning after a conversation last night with a Toshiba executive.

A few hours later, Toshiba's "Tree" spokescharacter got the axe; his video and web site were disabled. (Disclosure: Mr. Tree is no relation to D. Eadward Tree, the writer of this blog. I wouldn't touch him with a 10-foot branch.)

But let's not celebrate too much before absorbing some lessons from this saga:

1. We print lovers are still doing a crappy job getting the word out about how printing and paper usage are not necessarily bad for the environment. How many people do you suppose were involved in conceiving and approving of the No-Print Day campaign? (The main Toshiba web site linked to the campaign for the first few days, so the effort wasn't confined to some obscure corner of the organization.) Apparently not one of them questioned whether the campaign would actually help the environment or realized the effort would create a fact-based backlash.

Toshiba's No-Print Day As Popular As a Turd in the Punchbowl

Update: Toshiba pulled the plug on its campaign. See 9 Lessons from Toshiba's No-Print Day Debacle for the full story.
 
In the last three days, it seems, nearly every leading commentator on the U.S. printing industry has spoken out against Toshiba’s ill-conceived National No-Print Day.

Words like “boycott”, “hypocrites,” and “what were they thinking?” keep popping up in various articles, comments, LinkedIn discussions, and tweets about the giant corporation’s clumsy campaign. “Toshiba’s Hatchet Job” was the headline on Richard Romano’s Going Green blog for WhatTheyThink.com, which analyzed Dead Tree Edition's June 10 article, 10 Questions About Toshiba's No-Print Day.

“Some lunatic PR person evidently convinced Toshiba head honchos that this insane, made-up event would bring them public praise. Ha! it backfired badly!” said Margie Dana, founder of Print Buyers International, author and Printing Impressions columnist.

“Doesn’t Toshiba manufacture print production machines?” wrote Heidi Tolliver-Walker of The Digital Nirvana. “This would almost be comical if Toshiba weren’t embarking upon a national ad campaign to promote the idea.”

“I declare 10/23 is ALSO National Toss Your Toshiba Day,” commented Deborah Corn, chief operations officer of PrintMediaCentr and founder of the 37,000+-member Print Production Professionals group on LinkedIn.

10 Questions About Toshiba's No-Print Day

Update: Toshiba pulled the plug on its campaign. See 9 Lessons from Toshiba's No-Print Day Debacle for the full story.
 In a stunning display of greenwashing and ignorance, a U.S. branch of Toshiba has proclaimed October 23 National No-Print Day.

To raise awareness “of the impact printing has on our planet” and of "the role of paper in the workplace,” Toshiba America Business Solutions is asking people and companies not to print or copy anything that day.

"We know that approximately 336,000,000 sheets of paper are wasted daily -- that's more than 40,000 trees discarded every day in America,” Bill Melo, a Toshiba America vice president, said this week in announcing the effort.

The company is promoting the campaign with a series of web videos featuring Tree, an “affable spokescharacter” and alleged Toshiba employee. Viewers are asked to sign a pledge to give Tree “and his leafy colleagues” the day off.

The first video has a goof: Tree is shown marking Oct. 23 on a paper calendar. (Dude, that could be your cousin you’re writing on.) But even more serious are the questions Toshiba needs to answer, such as:

1. What is the source of that statistic about 336 million sheets of paper wasted every day, and what exactly do you mean by “wasted”?
2. According to that statistic, one tree is “discarded” for every 8300 sheets -- less than 90 pounds of office paper -- that is "wasted". But only one-third of that 90 pounds comes from whole trees; the rest is from sawmill residue and recycled fiber. What idiot is getting a yield of only 30 pounds of paper from an entire tree?

OK, Johnny, Now Greenwash Your Hands

One of the "joys" of traveling long distances on a busy holiday weekend is seeing how highway rest stops try to greenwash their way out of providing paper towels.

Shown here are two examples of hand dryers from my recent travels. The second one, in case you have trouble reading it, says "Save trees, eliminate paper towel waste, and maintain cleaner facilities with World Warm-Air Dryers."

Part of Dead Tree Edition's plan for reviving the paper industry is handing out little stickers saying "Wipe hands on pants". They could be placed under the hand dryer's instructions, right below "Rub hands vigorously under dryer."

Or how about one reading "This dryer powered by coal-fired electricity"?

Somehow, I don't think the state highway department (no, I'm not telling you which one) did a thorough environmental analysis before approving the message on the first example above: "We encourage the use of our high efficiency electric hand dryers as alternatives to disposable paper towels. By doing so, we reduce our carbon footprint and our impact on landfill capacity."

I'm not saying paper towels are more environmentally friendly than electric dryers. But I object to simplistic assumptions that all substitutes for paper are greener than using paper. (Dead Tree Edition has addressed this issue in such previous articles as Google Using Blatant Greenwash To Promote New Catalog App and Smackdown: Printed Editions vs. Digital Editions.)

Whether using an electric dryer has a lower carbon footprint and less impact on forests and landfills than paper towels depends greatly on a variety of variables, such as:

• The energy sources of the dryer's electricity and of the paper mill. (In North America, coal is the most likely source of the dryer's electricity, while relatively benign energy sources like hydroelectric are fairly common at paper mills.)
• The forestry practices used to obtain the towels' virgin fiber.
• The proportion of recycled content in the paper towels.
• The amount of deforestation caused by obtaining fuel for those power sources, such as via mountaintop removal for coal mining.
• The energy efficiency of the hand dryer and the paper mill.
• The proportion of people using hand dryers who end up saying, "Screw it" and finish drying their hands with toilet paper.
• The carbon footprint of the bathroom's TP.
• The disposal methods used for the bathroom's waste -- and the power plants' fly ash.

Speaking of not overlooking the environmental impact of electricity generation, I couldn't resist republishing these apocryphal coal-industry advertisements:


Home Solar Power Discounts - One Block Off the Grid

Google Using Blatant Greenwash To Promote New Catalog App

Google launched its Google Catalogs app this week with a shiny coat of greenwash.

"A Greener Way to Shop" proclaims the new product's promotional page, providing no substantiation for the claim.

"With Google Catalogs, you can subscribe to paperless versions of all your favorite catalogs," the page states.

Oh, so switching to information that's stored in energy-sucking data centers and then transmitted over the coal-fired Internet to devices containing a variety of toxic materials is environmentally sustainable simply because it involves no paper -- a recyclable product made mostly from renewable materials? C'mon, Google, a sophisticated company that has put so much effort into real sustainability initiatives should know better than that.

"Environmental marketing claims that include a comparative statement should be presented in a manner that makes the basis for the comparison sufficiently clear to avoid consumer deception," states the Federal Trade Commission's voluntary anti-greenwash guidelines. "In addition, the advertiser should be able to substantiate the comparison."

Related articles:

• Anti-Greenwash Group To Challenge E-Billing Claims in the U.S.
• Newspapers Are Greener Than Web News, Says Environmental Expert 
• Smackdown: Printed Editions vs. Digital Editions 
• The Greenwashing Media Award Goes to . . .

Anti-Greenwash Group To Challenge E-Billing Claims in the U.S.

U.S. companies now might want to think twice about promoting paperless billing by sending those "go green, go paperless" messages to their customers.

Two Sides, the industry-backed organization that has successfully challenged the truthfulness of such claims in the U.K. and Europe, announced the opening of a U.S. branch today.

The mission of Two Sides U.S. will be "to promote the sustainability of paper and print in the U.S. market," said Kevin Gammonley, CEO of NPTA Alliance, a trade association of paper merchants that is helping the U.S. branch get off the ground. "In our first phase of fundraising, we have received commitments from over 30 paper distributors who have decided to become early adopters of Two Sides in the U.S."

Before Two Sides revved up in the U.K., the Two Sides announcement said, "Research ... revealed that "43% of the major banks, 70% of telecoms and 30% of utilities were using misleading environmental statements to support their marketing messages, thereby conflicting with current advertising regulations which are in place in most countries."

"In 2010, Two Sides launched a campaign to target companies who claim that switching to online communication is better for the environment without verifiable supporting evidence," said Two Sides founder Martyn Eustace. "As a result, Two Sides has so far convinced 27 out of 33 major corporations to change their environmental claims or use wording that doesn’t include misleading or incorrect statements related to e-billing."

"We will be tailoring the campaign to the U.S. paper and print media market to ensure people understand that the responsible use of print and paper is a sustainable and effective way of communicating, said Phil Riebel, an environmental consultant and columnist who helped organize the U.S. branch. "A number of major pulp and paper producers and a large U.S. brand-name retailer" have joined the U.S. campaign.

For more information about how dead-tree (paper-based) communication stacks up environmentally against dead-dinosaur (electronic) methods, please see:

• 5 Brutally Honest Green-Themed Promotions I'd Like To See: Note the imaginary bank-statement insert acknowledging that the only thing green about going paperless is the money the bank will save.
• Newspapers Are Greener Than Web News, Says Environmental Expert 
• Smackdown: Printed Editions vs. Digital Edition

Newspapers Are Greener Than Web News, Says Environmental Expert

Which is greener, getting news online or reading a newspaper? For environmental expert and activist Sarah Westervelt, the obvious answer is the printed newspaper.

“It doesn’t take electricity to read my paper,” she said in a video posted recently at PBS' Mediashift site. “I’m too informed about what’s going to happen to my computer when I’m done with it and too concerned about that” to rely on the Web for news.



“I try to rely on the really good bio-compatible materials that have been around a long time,” said Westervelt, who as e-stewardship director at the Basel Action Network has done much to expose the bogus “recycling” of toxic wastes from discarded electronic gadgets.

“If everybody stops reading newspapers then perhaps we stop growing trees,” Westervelt said during the video, which was taken from a discussion sponsored by USC Annenberg's Specialized Journalism Program. Among other participants in the discussion were the production directors of the San Jose Mercury News and Chronicle Books.

Westervelt didn’t claim that everything about printing and paper is environmentally friendly, noting that trees for paper are sometimes grown on single-species plantations. But those issues pale in comparison with the many toxic materials and “15 different plastics” typically found in computers, she said.

Unlike paper, computer components do not lend themselves well to recycling and reuse because “you have this really complex waste combined with not enough value in the materials to pay for responsible recycling,” Westervelt said.

“So what we have is companies that are presenting themselves as recyclers and really what they are is waste brokers. They are just consolidating, loading up shipping containers and it goes off to China or India or Pakistan. And it’s just having absolutely horrific impacts in a lot of these developing countries to both human health and the environment.”

For a briefer and more light-hearted defense of printed newspapers against the digital onslaught, check out this video of a male a capella quartet doing a fabulous take-off on Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy”, with lines like "Does that make us crazy? Wanting you to read."

And, yes, this blogger does check his facts twice.

Related articles:

• Smackdown: Printed Editions vs. Digital Editions: A look at the environmental impact of Dead Tree editions (ink on paper) versus Dead Dinosaur editions (digital content read on devices containing 15 different petrochemical-based plastics).
• The Greenwashing Media Award Goes to . . .: Vendors of digital-publication software have made some bogus claims about the environmental friendliness of Dead Dinosaur editions.
• Green Publishing Quiz: Test your knowledge, and your misconceptions, about environmentally friendly publishing.

Smackdown: Printed Editions vs. Digital Editions

Finally, a paper company is fighting back against the ridiculous notion that electronic books are greener than printed books.

International Paper recently released “Are Pixels Greener Than Paper”, which compares the environmental profile of ink-on-paper publications (dead tree editions) to digital publications (what I call “dead dinosaur editions” because of the fossil fuels and petrochemicals they consume). It has good points backed by in-depth research, but we need to translate and reformat the PR-speak into something more understandable to the general public.

With The Wall Street Journal's bogus claim yesterday that "e-textbooks are environmentally friendly", it's more important than ever to take a realistic look at e-books. Therefore, Dead Tree Edition offers this color-coded "tale of the tape" (as they say in boxing circles) comparing Dead Dinosaur Editions with Dead Tree Editions on key attributes, with quotations from the IP brochure:

• Raw Materials:Paper is a renewable resource. The North American “paper and forest products industry replenishes more than it takes and ensures the sustainability of our forests by planting 1.7 million trees every single day, more than three times what is harvested.” But as for dead dinosaur editions, “making a computer typically requires the mining and refining of dozens of minerals and metals, including gold, silver and palladium, as well as the extensive use of plastics and hydrocarbon solvents.” No one is planting dead dinosaurs into the ground to make more oil for the petrochemicals that digital devices consume.
  
  
• Energy/Carbon Footprint: “Sixty percent of the energy used to make paper in the U.S. comes from carbon-neutral renewable resources and is produced on site at mills.” “The electronics industry uses more than 90 percent fossil fuels purchased off the grid."
  
  
• Recycling:“In the U.S., nearly 60 percent of all paper is recycled, recovered and reused to make new paper products.” Electronic devices have a recycling rate of only 18%.
  
  
• User Editing: The Journal article says most students prefer dead-tree textbooks to dead-dinosaur textbooks, partly because they can't highlight important passages or write notes in e-textbooks.
  
  
• Reliability: Digital editions are often read on machines running Windows or Vista. 'Nuf said. Dead-tree editions never crash, get infected with viruses, receive spam, or serve pop-up ads.
  
  
• Durability: Ever dropped a laptop? Not pretty.
  
  
• Lifespan: I read a 150-year-old book the other day and have 75-year-old copies of National Geographic, but my 15-year-old WordPerfect for DOS files are either unreadable or FUBAR. How many of today’s laptops, e-book readers, and iPhones will still be in use five years from now?
  
  
• Waste: “The lifespan of a computer is short, and electronics have become the fastest growing waste stream in the world.” Much of that waste is toxic. Paper is reusable, recyclable, and biodegradable.
  
  
• Personal Hygiene: Speaking of waste, which would you rather read while sitting on the toilet, a magazine or a Kindle? And remember that, before they had toilet paper, our ancestors had the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Ever tried to wipe your bottom with a Blackberry?
  

The Greenwashing Media Award Goes to . . .

While countless words are published about the environment in honor of Earth Day this week, it's time for the publishing industry to confront its involvement in an egregious, and rather bizarre, form of greenwashing.

I'm talking about touting Web content and digital editions as being environmentally friendly and disparaging ink-on-paper editions, which are still the major source of revenue for most traditional publishers. For example, one magazine's Web site recently admonished readers to reduce their carbon footprint by signing up for a digital edition -- right next to an article about the huge amounts of electricity that Web servers gobble up.

But the worst offenders are the vendors of digital-publication software, such as Nxtbook, Texterity, and Zinio.

"When you publish with Nxtbook Media, you're making a very green decision -- one that's good for both the bottom line and the environment," says the Nxtbook Web site without providing any data or justification for its questionable environmental claim.

Fortunately, Don Carli, the Godfather of Green Media, played the role of Bovine Fecal Matter Police in an excellent interview recently with Metaprinter:

"When subjected to 'cradle-to-cradle' lifecycle analysis, e-reading is not nearly as green as many naively assume it is," says Carli, founder of the Institute for Sustainable Communication. "Computers, eReaders, and cell phones don't grow on trees, and their spiraling requirement for energy is unsustainable."

Computers and other electronic equipment require various metals and petro-chemicals in the manufacturing process, electricity (often coal-powered) to live, and "at the end of their all-too-short useful lives . . . become the single largest stream of toxic waste created by man," says Carli. In contrast, "much of print media is based on comparatively benign and renewable materials."

I should note that Amazon and Sony seem to have had the good sense not to claim that their e-book readers are an environmentally friendly choice. Not so with the publishing-industry vendors who create editions of publications that can be read on computers.

So I now have the honor of presenting Dead Tree Edition's Greenwashing in Media Award jointly to Nxtbook, Texterity, and Zinio.

As punishment, their executives should be forced to use their own company's digital-edition software to read an entire digital facsimile of a magazine on a small laptop computer. Trying to read something that is taller than wide on a device that is wider than tall is a truly painful experience.

Making a Stink About EnviroInk

We're not the only ones wondering what to make of Quebecor World's EnviroInk announcement. (See "Green Ink or Greenwash Ink".)


At a recent presentation to customers, our contacts tell us, a Quebecor official said her phone had been "ringing off the wall" since the announcement. Several customers peppered her with questions about the ink's environmental significance, such as whether it was greener than standard heatset-offset inks and whether it represented an improvement over Quebecor's old practices. She was unable to answer those questions but promised future clarifications.


She did say the ink usually contained at least 25% renewable resources, which is more than the minimum required for SoySeal inks. The main difference is that the renewables in EnviroInk come mostly from trees and those in SoySeal inks come from soybeans.


(Before you jump to conclusions about soy ink being greener because it "saves trees," consider this question: Which would be a more environmentally friendly use of a piece of land, soy farming or working forest? Besides, no one cuts down trees to make pine rosin; it's a byproduct of making pulp.)


Quebecor has confirmed that use of the EnviroInk symbol would not violate federal "greenwashing" standards. But several who heard the presentation nevertheless expressed concern that customers would indeed view the symbol as a form of greenwashing.