A new study compares reading the news online to having the paper dropped at your door – and it has no good news for lovers of the Sunday paper. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:
Transcript
A new study compares reading the news online to having the paper dropped at your door – and it
has no good news for lovers of the Sunday paper. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen
Kelly reports:
Mike Toffel is a researcher at UC Berkeley, where he reads the newspaper on a personal digital
assistant – or PDA. That’s a handheld computer. He wondered how much carbon dioxide that
activity released, compared to reading a hard copy of the paper. So, he looked at the design, use
and disposal of a PDA versus having the New York Times delivered from a printer 50 miles away.
Toffel found that production and delivery of the paper released more heat trapping gases.
“Reading the news for over a year on your PDA emits about 5 kilograms of carbon dioxide per
year whereas with a newspaper, depending on the scenario, it’s 160 to 700 kilograms per year.”
Toffel says he doesn’t really expect folks to start curling up with their computers on Sunday
morning. But his study may prompt people to read other things online, and use less energy in the
process.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.