Butterflies

Go Paperless

Step 1: Use less paper.

Paper was invented a couple thousand years ago, back when people watched The Simpsons. It’s been a smash hit ever since. In terms of career longevity it’s second only to floors. Always thinking, always innovating, paper levelled up in the 15th century, teaming up Avengers-style with words and the printing press to bring literacy and junk mail to the masses.

As ever, we’ve gone too far: The whole history of humanity is essentially a bunch of teenagers left home alone with a drinks cabinet. Ploughing through our resources, in the UK we get through about 12 million metric tons of paper and card every year, a decent share of the 420 million metric tons the whole world gets through. We’re talking tens of billions of sheets of paper every day. That adds up to a ton of trees felled, a ton of forests cleared, and a ton of carbon dioxide chugged out in the transportation and production required to turn trees into paper. Even recycling takes a ton of energy, which takes a ton of carbon dioxide, even as we feel good about our green selves for filling recycling bins.

Reducing consumption is always the best option, saving energy and resources instead of making amends for burning through them. Let’s go paperless.

Let’s go paperless at home. Let’s read news online to save 60-odd sheets a day landing on our doormats. Let’s sign up for paperless billing and bank statements. Let’s send e-greetings to people we don’t like very much, save paper cards for the people that really matter, and send bricks through our enemies’ windows without attaching a note. Let’s use libraries, buy second hand books and give books away to save new books being printed. If we don’t care about the tactility of things let’s read e-books instead. Let’s sign up for the mailing preference service or American equivalents to cut down on junk mail. Let’s use cloths instead of paper towels. Let’s not bother with receipts from cashpoints. Let’s get college prospectuses online. Let’s buy electronic or multi-journey tickets on public transport to save a new one every trip. Let’s download music to save the sleeve notes. Let’s buy reusable coffee filters. Let’s dump people in person instead of writing Dear John letters.

Let’s go paperless at work. Let’s quit printing emails. Let’s print on both sides of paper to halve the amount we use. Let’s reuse envelopes. Let’s write notes on scrap paper instead of buying special little yellow pads with distinctive little glue strips. Let’s scan and email documents instead of posting them. Let’s use digital business cards. Let’s rant to our corporate overlords about all of the above, and have them make a bunch this stuff compulsory.

Life is so digitised now this should be easy. The only downside is the energy it takes to power our computers and phones, but with ours coming from sustainable sources instead of fossils we’re in the clear.

Let’s go paperless all the time always. Except for when we’re in hospital and have to be in the nip except for one of those paper gowns. Saving the environment’s nice and all but modesty ain’t without its charms.

i

Go paperless

 

Save resources

 

And, on this occasion, save the goddamn world

 

Related Blog Posts

A three-legged carbon footprint

A three-legged carbon footprint

My grand return to the world of disability hasn’t been great for carbon footprinting. The early, housebound stage was amazing, obviously. The plus side of not leaving my bed for months is that it reduced my emissions – and my activity, social life and hope – to zero. But as I got more with it, public transport was no longer an option…

11 Reasons Climate Change Will Wipe Us Out, LOL

11 Reasons Climate Change Will Wipe Us Out, LOL

As the climate crisis escalates and we begin laying track for Fury Roads, most of us are living our lives much as before. It’s a society-wide combover, with all of us pretending not to notice the very clear bald patches poking through. But even with our eyes closed and our fingers in our ears, climate breakdown will keep on trucking. Here’s how, Buzzfeed style:

High high death toll at low low prices!

High high death toll at low low prices!

Say what you like about climate change, it takes a lot of hard work. Wilfully destroying the planet, triggering climate breakdown and bringing on irreversible mass extinction takes effort and sticktoitiveness. It takes constant vigilance, lest we accidentally find ourselves reducing our kamikaze carbon emissions. Fortunately, humans are always working, always innovating. Always coming up with new ways to wipe ourselves out.

Shell to pay

Shell to pay

Something big might possibly have happened, maybe. As climate breakdown kicks off and the sixth mass extinction continues, the genocidal capitalists behind it all might finally be getting what for.

Deep sea mining: Because the planet won’t kill itself

Deep sea mining: Because the planet won’t kill itself

Dumb as we are, humans are still finding new ways to wipe out life on earth. The latest wheeze is deep sea mining, in which genocidal capitalists hunt for minerals and metals by tearing up the seabed, demolishing fragile undersea ecosystems we’ve barely begun to explore or understand. Add to this our love of chronic overfishing, plastic pollution and coral bleaching, and we’re properly giving the oceans what for. Which is a shame, given they’re currently keeping us alive.

Low traffic neighbourhood, low energy activism

Low traffic neighbourhood, low energy activism

With the Covid apocalypse continuing to apocalypt, and lockdowns limiting our ability to gather in groups, environmental activism has become slightly tricky. And with yer man The Zero struck down by long Covid his ability to do much of anything has become even trickier, though he remains able to refer to himself creepily in the third person. Happily, Greenpeace is still trying to save us…

Boryx and Crake

Boryx and Crake

And so to the distasteful business of saying something halfway nice about a Tory policy. This week saw incompetent Head Boy Boris Johnson announce his 10-point plan to take back control from the climate apocalypse. And while I’ll be back to slagging the vicious prick by the fourth paragraph, there were a couple of half-decent things in it that deserve a mention.

A true inconvenience

A true inconvenience

It was at six dark forty on the 13th October 2020 that there was a great disturbance in the Twittersphere, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in pissy consternation and were, unfortunately, not suddenly silenced. Then it was that Apple announced they would start shipping phones without power adapters and earbuds.

Soylent Greenpeace

Soylent Greenpeace

As the Covid apocalypse continues apocalypting, and global recessions begin to recess, Greenpeace has been busy asking people what kind of a future they want, keen on the reboot potential of a #GreenRecovery. They want us to think about what transport could look like, how healthcare and energy and infrastructure could be. And they want us to write about it in foulmouthed blogs and on inappropriate social media accounts that could get us fired if someone blows our poorly-maintained anonymity. Okay then.

Blog archives

Share This