"Global warming, also known as the green house effect is a topic that has
received much attention in recent years; yet our climate change is not a recent
problem. It has been morphing over many years. What is increasing is the rate
of change; it is accelerating due to the growth of the human population. The
growth of our population has increased our use of fuel, land, and
manufacturing. All of these are increasing emissions into our atmosphere that
increases global warming."
My thoughts are on controlling consumption & thus reducing wastages of all kind in our daily lives.
We continue talking about global warming, environmental degradation, making a difference in the lives of poor; unknowingly, our actions contribute to the very cause we oppose. These wastages are in different spheres of our life such as use of Paper, Plastic bags, Vehicle use, Food & eating habits,Clothing and so on.
• When we visit mall/food retail chains, we are not allowed to carry handbag and at the end of
our purchase have to carry multiple plastic bags.
• All of us buy vegetables at roadside vendors or from malls and hardly carry any bags. The
result is we carry vegetables in plastic bags which are not biodegradable....the thin ones.
How paper impacts our day to day life? How many times a day we touch paper?
-- newspapers, toilet paper, labels, money, tissues, books, shopping bags, receipts, ATM receipts,
Cash memos, statements, printer and copier paper at home and work, magazines, food packaging.
Now let’s consider following facts w.r.t. world consumption pattern.
1. The average American consumes more than 700 pounds of paper a year, -- that's the world's
highest per capita figure.
2. China, India and the rest of Asia are the fastest growing per-capita users of paper, but they
still rank far behind Eastern Europe and Latin America (about 100 pounds per person per
year), Australia (about 300 pounds per person per year) and Western Europe (more than
400 pounds per person per year).
3. But don’t get mislaid by these per capita figures, always remember that China, India and
other Asian countries are densely populated than rest of the world. Hence our total
contribution to forest degradation would be equal to rest of the world.
4. A few years back, my official usage of paper was higher than 500 A4 sheets per month for
sharing of information on products, costing, internal memos, proposals, customer letters
plus computer stationary used for MIS.
Paper today constitute a most important and primary reason for tree felling and reducing forest
area across the globe.
5. Forests store 50% of the world's terrestrial carbon. (In other words, they are important
"carbon sinks" that hold onto pollution that would otherwise lead to global warming.)
6. Two third of the world's forests have already been cleared or burned, and 80% of what's left
has been seriously degraded.
7. 42% of the industrial wood harvest is used to make paper.
8. The paper industry is the 4th largest contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
9. Paper accounts for 25% of landfill waste (and one third of municipal landfill waste)
10. Municipal landfills account for one third of human-related methane emissions (and methane
is 23-times more potent a greenhouse gas than is carbon dioxide).
11. Printing and writing papers use the least amount of recycled content -- just 6%.
12. While the paper industry invests in new recycled newsprint and paper packaging plants in
the developing world, almost none of the new printing and writing paper mills use recycled
content.
Now after understanding how paper impacts global warming and reduced forest cover, which are
the areas where we can make a difference. Please consider some of the examples in our day to day
use and how associated wastages are the resultant.
Increase of consumption across Banks : Few years ago, we had bank provided pass books of
A5 size with 10-12 pages that used to last us for minimum of six months depending on our
transaction. Now with the onset of core banking/ATM, our consumption has increased by
three ways. We use ATM receipts, Statement of accounts on periodical basis and passbooks.
a. How ATM receipts are used – These are thermal printed and used for short term
proof.
b. Statements: These are used for tracking account activity movement over a period,
difficult to retain over longer duration.
c. Passbooks: they are sleek & can be retained for close to 10 years or more.
Why ATM receipts create more waste?
I. ATM receipts are of non - standard size and vary from bank to bank. Following instances
can help in understanding the problem.
i. Kotak Bank uses slip which is of 8 inches in length and matter is mostly written on
first few inches and almost 5 inches of space is blank and unused.
ii. IDBI uses a slip of almost 4 inches in length and with almost 1 inch of space which is
blank.
iii. Dena bank uses 4 in*3 in slip and there is ample space to save.
iv. Now if banks were to use ATM receipts of size of credit card receipts, will it make
any difference to users....I hope not, looking at the impact this activity would bring in
to saving of few kms of forest cover.
Statements – the need for stopping waste : why would anyone prefer statement to
passbook when they occupy large space and are available at the end of
month/quarter? They occupy large space in our files and are definitely not ready
reckoners like our passbooks are. I would request all of you to closely scrutinize
statements each of us receive from time to time and you will find that without
touching the whole lot of information, the statements can be made more sleek and
handy.
2. Cash Memo’s generated at retail chains such as reliance fresh, big bazaar, malls: Another
addition in our paper use output is obviously the long cash memos each of these retail chains,
malls bring to our life. These stores generate a lengthy cash memo whether we buy one item or
100 items. Compare that with the slick cash memo of earlier times or cash memo generated on
used paper (on another side of used paper) by most of the daily needs/kirana stores nearly five
year ago.
Please consider a case below.
Reliance fresh stores generate 1000 cash memo in my area on daily basis. Each of these receipts
is almost 9 to 12 inches long with fixed matter occupying 6 inch, blank space almost 2 inch and
variable space varying from 1 inch to 9 inch long. Now just think if one can make decrease in
fixed matter space usage by almost 10% that would result in savings of 1500 mtr. of paper at
one store per month.
Now assume that there are atleast 150 such stores opened by reliance on a nationwide basis,
that would be savings of 225 kms of paper. Further consider atleast 4 such chains working across
India that would be close to 1000 kms of paper saved each month. Imagine how this one single
action would result in savings for these retail stores whether Reliance fresh or Big Bazaar etc.
while taking us nearer to our main goal of minimizing wastage and stopping forest degradation.
How do we do this: The activity will not require too much field working, at the same time we
will be able to capitalize on our strength areas of nearness to internet. We will require a big
contribution of efforts by some of our members in arranging the audience with these corporate
houses.
We will create a website, do an campaign across corporate houses, tweet, create blogs, and
meet in person to CSR leaders across banks & retail chains to create an awareness and then let
the internal forces to these organizations help us get the job done.
What is in it for us:
• A better future for our next generation? Fresh air, Fresh water, Green earth.
• If done right, national level accolades from Ministry of Environment & Forests.
• Who knows, it might lead to global recognition by UN and other bodies tomorrow
Thing to Ponder:
Could we have saved the ballot papers we used during our first meeting to vote?
If the United States cut office paper use by just 10% it would prevent the emission of 1.6
million tons of greenhouse gases -- the equivalent of taking 280,000 cars off the road. I hope
same hold true for India as well.
Compared to using forest wood, paper made with 100% recycled content uses 44% less
energy, produces 38% less greenhouse gas emissions, 41% less particulate emissions, 50%
less wastewater, 49% less solid waste and -- of course -- 100% less wood.
Courtesy to Anil, as he mentioned all these points to discuss in the ILN Mumbay meet.
