More Readers for a Better Earth
Today is Earth Day 2008. I’ve seen it celebrated at first in Google (and I didn’t get the reason for shaping letters like trees) and later on, in many blogs who wrote about it, or celebrated it by changing their usual header to a “greener” one.
Have you thought that the more readers we can get, the better the Earth can become? Do you remember, in the age before internet, how many books were you buying and reading every year? Hard copy books are eating the forest. Printing houses are polluting (I never understood how printing house workers don’t faint because of the smell inside). Or how many newspapers you used to read and send to the garbage the next day. Other trees, other forests gone for good.
The better a blog is, the most readers it attracts, the more trees are saved, simply because those readers take from their books reading time, in order to read your blogs. The days have still 24 hours each, while the things we want to do in those 24 hours are maybe ten times more. The result? We cut on books reading time, then we buy less and less books, as the ones we’ve already bought over the past five years are still waiting to be read.
How is it? Can you believe that your blogging can save a few trees every year?
Simonne says...
My first comment on this post is that I’ve prepared also a nice picture, but Wordpress 2.5 is my enemy these days and wouldn’t let me upload pictures on any of my blogs. Luckily I haven’t upgraded all of them yet
Ronald Huereca says...
Simonne,
I’m having issues too. I added in a picture for you though. Hope you don’t mind
On a related note, I think I’ve saved many trees reading online news
Simonne says...
Thank you so much, Ronald, your picture is much better than the one I’ve prepared.
I also read the news online, and recently I stopped buying computer magazines, because I can read them online, too
Trisha says...
Hi Ron
I hope that the blogosphere does contribute in some way to saving trees, but I know that since I’ve gotten involved, as both a reader and a blogger, that I’ve become much more aware of the whole issue. I used to print out a lot of the information I found on the internet, either to save or to read later as time allows. Now I just save pages as PDF files to save them or read later, because I realized when I started printing out great blog posts that I was burning through too much paper! Seeing my own consumption made me stop and look at how my (previously poor) strategy was causing such waste. I make a point now of encouraging everyone I know to NOT print so much, but to bookmark sites, or save the pages on their computer. My bookmarks list is HUGE but that’s okay. That doesn’t hurt the trees.
Anything we can to to bring greater awareness to our need to lighten our footprint on the earth is good, and that includes us bloggers who don’t normally write about environmental issues.
Great post photo by the way!
Ronald Huereca says...
Thanks Trisha on the photo. I totally forgot about Earth day until Simonne made her post, so kudos to Simonne on that.
I also like printing to PDFs. Lately I’ve been saving links I like into del.icio.us, which is how our link blog is powered in the footer.
Simonne says...
Hey, Trisha,
There is a secondary benefit of not printing out everything: there is less mess to clean up inside the house. In my case, if I print something, I read it only once, then I just throw it away in some drawer, or in some corner, only to get rid of it several months later