Please join the Facebook group: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=info&gid=313719393935

A group created at promoting reduced usage of news consumption through the Paper media. Now is the time to switch and move.

FAQs below:

How will it help? This group is just a medium to promote the idea. The idea that we CAN stop reading the physical newspaper. It is possible to change a habit that we had put on since our school days. The real change comes when we stop subscribing to physical Newspapers. When a lot of us do that and switch to online media, the change will force the Newspaper agencies to stop delivering news through that medium. That is when we will have far less number of trees to be cut down. Eventually we can be in a position where the rate of cutting down trees will be lesser than their growth and plantation. We can regain a greener and cleaner world. Newspapers are just the first step, but a big one at that.

Why only Newsapers? Why not magazines, books, textbooks, office printouts, advertising pamphlets etc? Because the quantum of paper used to publish Newspapers is higher than most of those. To add to that, it has the least long-term value.

Why now? Because we have alternatives now.

What are those alternatives?
1) Internet Access “Haves” : Can read online versions of the same newspapers or read one of the many thousands of news portals.
2) Electronic Devices: Once you find a product that is affordable and likeable to you(mobile smartphones, e-readers), invest in it. I am sure all Newspaper companies will soon have custom displays to suit these readers. Within two years, we may see very light foldable plastic sheets as our e-readers.

What about our Moms and Dads, who are not tech-enabled?
1) Encourage them to start using computers and get online. Age is never a bar to learn anything new, more-so true for technology.
2) Wait for the the foldable plastic sheet e-readers. That will surely be easy for them.

What happens to those who dont have enough internet access? They may continue to get the paper format till they log on. But once the “haves” will switch to alternatives, the “have-nots” will create enough pressure on the government and private sector to cater to their “byte” needs.

We will still be using up natural resources to create those Electronic Devices. We are just shifting the consumption from trees to metals. Isn’t the netgain zero? Saving trees is a major priority, as they will help us fight climate change to a large extent. Though the ideal world will have no mining required for the metals, we can bear with that for a while. Additionaly, most electronic devices that we use will last for a couple of years on an average. That will not require so much consumption of natural resources.

But people dependant on the paper industry will loose jobs, Won’t they? The world that we live in continues to grow on “Creative Destruction”. It will be sad to see jobs of people in the entire chain (from newspaper delivery boys, vendors to people working in the paper creation and recycling) getting affected for a short-term, but they will surely regain their livelihoods through alternative forms of employment. Most of them are as such extremely agile. They do not have constraints like “I am a programmer, I cannot do data entry”.