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November 10, 2006
The "Myth" of the Paper-Less Society
There is an interesting new StatsCan report out with useful data on all aspects of information technology, but one table in particular caught my eye. It is used to support the authors' argument that, contrary to received wisdom, paper consumption is climbing in our supposedly paper-less society:
It is deliciously contrarian, but there is a problem. Why should we care about raw consumption of paper? The relevant stat is paper consumption per capita, not in aggregate. And when you look at that figure in Canada and the U.S. you see that per capita paper consumption has declined in recent years, not increased. Granted, there was a huge spike in per capita paper consumption between 1983 and 1993, but it has fallen since then.
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In addition to the printer you have to also include the impact of fax machines (popularized in the mid-1980s)for the spike. Electronic media has been a much more efficient replacement for the transmission of data than for the replacement of printed text. Also the fax machine, though still used, is quickly becoming an office relic.
I agree that the per-capita shows that paper consumption is not rising. However, the fact that 10 years goes by and per capita paper consumption is largely unchanged does support a milder version of the authors original theory that computing has done very little to reduce paper consumption. Thus, "paperless" is a myth.
When you factor out declining newsprint, I would bet paper use is steadily rising. There probably isn't a figure for paper use per office worker, but I bet that is really rising.
One thing that has certainly grown over this time period is the amount of text & numeric information used on a daily basis. Even if we print a smaller fraction our 'data', our denominator is much larger than it was in 83.
I printed this out in the office, and read it on the way home.
Very interesting stuff . . .
It's hard to believe paper use per office worker is still rising. I wonder if overall paper consumption has stabilized (and not fallen) because of the tremendous number of catalogs, flyers, and other junk mail we all receive every day. Or the volumes of unwanted phones books sent out. Or the paper included in the ever-growing number of boxes being shipped (is cardboard in these numbers?). Those are certainly my largest "consumption" of paper every day.
Good catch. The spike is undoubtedly due to the proliferation of 'personal printers'. I assume that growth effect has stabilized now.