Submitted: The Two Sides Team January 17, 2013

Verdigris, the environmental awareness initiative, is asking the printing and paper industries and their customers to ‘Go Google-less’.
January 15 2013

Electric Light & Power

Verdigris, the environmental awareness initiative, is asking the
printing and paper industries and their customers to ‘Go Google-less’.
The plea is in response to Google’s Paperless 2013 campaign which urges
people to stop using paper. Verdigris wants the industry to stop using
the Google search engine and related products such as Google+, Chrome or
Android in the hope that Google will reconsider.

The Paperless 2013 campaign (www.paperless2013.org) claims that relying exclusively on digital communications instead of
using paper benefits the environment. However, Paperless 2013 is more
about getting people to use cloud storage, online bill management,
accounting and e-signatures. Google and its campaign partners are using
an environmental message to encourage use of their own technologies, not
to aid environmental sustainability. “Their arguments are ill-founded
and potentially damaging to the environment,” says Laurel Brunner,
Verdigris founder.

Electronic devices cannot be recycled; paper can. Unlike paper,
electronic devices are not based on a sustainable resource, but depend
on oil-based plastics and rare earths neither of which can be
replenished. Electronic devices require huge amounts of energy to
support and maintain the content they deliver, whereas paper based
content has a one-time carbon footprint. Electronic devices create an
environmentally damaging waste stream that cannot easily be managed.
Paper can be reused, recycled and disposed of responsibly when it
reaches its end of life.

Verdigris wants enough people Go Google-less to encourage Google to
reconsider its campaign. “At the very least, they might try to better
understand the environmental impact of media and about what industry can
to do help reduce environmental impacts,” says Laurel. “The higher the
number of users, the higher Google can charge advertisers. Reduce the
number and we undermine the source of Google’s income. The threat of
harm to its revenue model might encourage Google to become better
informed and be more responsible in its environmental positioning,
particularly as relates to print and paper.” _To change your default
search engine_ At the top of your browser’s tool bar is the search
field. Here you will see the logo of your default search engine, its
name or a spyglass and a little down arrow. Click on the down arrow and
you will see a list of search engines. Select something other than
Google to be your default search tool.

More information about Verdigris can be found on the project’s website –

www.verdigrisproject.com

. This provides access to Verdigris data and information about other
environmental developments,as well as links to other useful
environmental websites and a growing list of the world’s printers
compliant to ISO 14001, the environmental management standard.

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