Archive: Opinions

There is a lot of talk these days about saving trees.  Bring your own reusable bag to save paper bag use.  Paperless office.  Canceling your newspaper subscription.  But a study published by Morgan Stanley Research predicts that printing -- and therefore paper use -- will be significantly reduced because of iPads and other pad computers.

I have long said that recycling and general saving the planet can be coerced or guilted, but will never be truly successful until it is 1) easy to do and 2) as inexpensive or less expensive than historical ways of doing things.  Despite the fact that I think Tompkins County Solid Waste Department does a great job of promoting recycling and reuse, look at how much harder and more expensive throwing things away is.

Philosophically it's a great thing, but it's not quite there yet in usability.  I have piles of stuff I don't know how to get rid of that would have been long gone in the past.  Now there are special days for different kinds of waste at different pick-up points, and the cost of garbage tags has gone up alarmingly, not to mention the cost of trash pick-up.

So I resent having all this trash around the house, but I love the idea of reducing waste.  That is the heart of why I love the idea that a device like a pad computer not only could reduce waste, but actually is doing it today.

TC Solid Waste recently changed the rules for recycling.  Before we had to sort things.  Now we just dump them in a giant bin with a big R on it.  I don't know whether it has increased the amount of recycling in Tompkins County, but I'll bet it has.  I know I like doing it this way a lot better because throwing something away shouldn't be a thinking thing -- it should be something you do without thinking about it.  Not printing should be the same.

700 tablet users responded to the Morgan Stanley survey, which showed that 46% had reduced their printer use.  I have to say that instead of printing documents before school board or town or village board meetings as I used to, I now copy the documents onto my iPad before -- or even download them during -- the meetings and read them on the screen.

Reading on the iPad isn't the lousy experience that reading on a computer has been for so many years.  It's actually pretty great in many ways.  It doesn't hurt my eyes, I can read in the dark, and make the type bigger so I can really see it.  And you don't use paper (and ridiculously expensive ink) only to throw it away a few days later.  You put the documents on the pad to read them.

When you don't need them any more you toss them into the ol' bit bucket (which means you delete them).  No solid waste.  No waste at all.  No recycling necessary, and the space freed up can be reused by documents you need later.

The study predicts that printer supply revenues will decrease by 2% to 5% in 2012.  Desktop sales dropped from 74% of computer sales in 2004 to 55% in 2006, and notebook sales nearly doubled between 2006 and 2010.  Morgan Stanley predicts tablet sales will continue to erode computer sales going forward, and accelerate the reduction of printing demand in home, enterprise, and commercial printing markets.

Paper use will drop dramatically.  46% of iPad owners said they plan to print many fewer pages and another 44% said they plan to print fewer.  Even non iPad users are getting on the paperless bandwagon, with 20% saying they plan many fewer pages and a whopping 51% planning to print fewer pages.

There are 500 sheets of paper in a ream.  You can get a half case (six reams, or 3000 pieces of paper) of store brand 81/2x11" inkjet paper at Staples for about $43.  If you don't get 11.63 half cases of paper you have saved enough money to buy an iPad.  So by saving 34,890 pieces of paper you can get a great reading device that isn't just for reading -- it does quite a bit more.

And the price of pad computing is coming down.  Rumor has it that a smaller and less costly iPad will be introduced this year, and the Amazon Kindle Fire is already on sale for the cost of only 13,950 pieces of paper ($200).

And those calculations don't even count the price of ink.  When you add that cost to the equation, pad computers are already paying for themselves within the lifetime of the devices, and it will soon be a no-brainer. 

Reading documents on a pad is easy to do, and becoming increasingly affordable.  That meets my criteria for a successful recycling/reuse initiative.  More businesses are buying iPads for their workers, and schools, including Lansing Elementary School, are buying them for students to use.  They increase productivity, they are fun.  And now we know they reduce paper waste.

That makes them even more cool.

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