January 10 2013

by David Ward, Print Week

In an open letter to Google chief executive Larry Page and chairman
Eric Schmidt, PIA president and chief executive Michael Makin wrote: “We
all must do our part to respect the environment, but pitting one
segment of the communications spectrum against another is not the right
way to achieve this goal.

“How would your company feel if the almost 1 million direct workers
in the printing industry encouraged their families and friends to go
“Google-Less” in 2013? This is something to consider given that 67% of
online searches are actually driven by offline messages.”

Two Sides UK director Martyn Eustace and Phil Riebel, president
of Two Side US, also penned a letter to Schmidt, noting: “While the
products and services delivered by Google are to be admired, this new
initiative is clearly another example of a self-interested organization
using an environmentally focused marketing campaign to promote its
services while ignoring its own impact upon the environment.”

The Two Sides letter – and press release – went on to catalog the
negative environmental impact of Google’s business, including that the
search giant uses 2.3bn kilowatt-hours of electricity a year, enough to
power 207,000 US homes for 12 months, or about 41 Empire State
Buildings.

Though the letters singled out Google, it is only one member of the
Paperless Coalition, which is made up of companies such as Xero,
Manilla, Expensify and Fujitsu’s ScanSnap line, and sponsors such as
email marketing software provider Constant Contact – all of which have
stake in moving everything from billing to expense reports away from
paper.

“My sense is the appeal of the campaign is aimed primarily at the
small office/home office getting them to not print out their emails,”
Makin told PrintWeek in an interview. “But when you look at the
partners, it’s rather conspiratorial in the way that all of the players
have a vested interest in non-paper offices, not because it’s good for
the environment, because it’s best for their business.”

Makin conceded that the commercial printing and paper industries
faces a bit of an uphill fight because people don’t really think about
the environmental impact of the all the electronic devices they use.

“The environmental lobby has done a very good job with the message
that if you chop down a tree and you’re in the printing industry you’re
hurting the environment,” he explained. “So it’s a huge challenge, but
that’s why we have to continue to speak out and use the (PIA) Value of
Print campaign to dispel many of these myths that are out there.”

Riebel told PrintWeek that much of the Two Sides efforts are
spent making sure opponents of the use of paper are factual in their
claims. “We often let them know they are not respecting marketing
guidelines and that they should remove many of the environmental claims
around going paperless because those are not substantiated and are based
on perception,” he added.

Two Sides US and the PIA did have one highly visible success last
year when Toshiba USA backed away from a planned National No Print Day
after hearing from both groups. Riebel said Two Sides US has spent much
of the latter half of 2012 educating banks, utilities and telecoms on
the need to be factual when trying to urge their consumers to switch to
paperless billing.

“From my side we’ve had five companies make changes to their
messaging and I’ve got a lot of discussions underway with banks that are
interested in talking to us,” he added. “Many of them are unaware that
they are upsetting people in our industry – as well as not respecting
marketing guidelines. Overall it’s going well but we also know it’s
going to be a slow process because it’s takes a while to deal with these
large corporations.”