I thought of a great idea, but what do you guys think of it?

Question

I was thinking about all the paper everyone uses a day, then I wondered how there are so many trees to make all that paper. The average American uses about 2,000,000,000 trees per year. What if everyone had their own laptop, and you wrote everything down on it instead of wasting away trees. I'm not a tree hugger, but we use so much paper a day. Read this here too http://members.aol.com/ramola15/funfacts.html.

For some reason the link isn't working.

Answer 1

On the front end of that equation, it does seem simple.

However, every equation needs to balance. More laptops means that there will be increased energy consumption, thereby releasing more harmful elements into the air (i.e., coal burning). Also, the environmental impact of having to dispose of a laptop is pretty high, too.

Answer 2

Well it’s a good idea at heart, but the cost to implement it is more than the costs of maintaining conservation that is being used right now for paper and trees over many years, and those lap tops will break down, which means you'll have to start all over every few years. Most of the US paper comes from tree farms most of which practice very high standards of conservation and replanting, and the paper industry has made a lot of progress over the years avoiding pollutants as much as possible, far less than the Lap Tops energy consumption would cause also.

Answer 3

The average American does not use 2B trees a year. That's just plain ridiculous. The idea of everyone using their laptop could only come from someone who does not understand the issues. No offense. Using a laptop means using energy. Which means fossil fuels. Which means more damage to the ozone layer. Not to mention the batteries that need to be disposed of, and other non degradable plastics and components used. ALL of these use energy or harm the environment. Trees are renewable. Trading trees for laptops is NOT a good idea. And you need to do some research on that average use statistic.

Answer 4

I seriously question your comment that the average american uses 2 trillion trees (2,000,000,000) as this is more trees than are harvested by the entire lumber industry per year.
Second, Laptops require several materials that when created pollute the enviroment as well, things like plastics, and inks, also all of the metals contained have to be mined by machinery operated on fossil fuels; Lead,tin,copper,gold,silver,and other metals.
As well as the battery which likely contains lithium.
Nothing is free, there are tradeoffs for everything.
At least you can re-grow a tree.

Answer 5

Our landfills are filling up with last years cellphones and computers, which are toxic to the environment...

There's a balance to everything...we kill all the trees for a while...which results in humans becoming extinct...and then all the trees come back richer and fuller than before...and the oceans are filling up with un-biodegradable plastics, which were touted as replacements for paper stuff...which again gets rid of humans for a while...and then nature comes back again after we're all gone...nobody builds houses made of steel or hemp or whatever...the lumber business won't go out of business until there's nothing left to cut down...what are ya' gonna do?

For every swing one way toward conservation...something else swings the other way...like a crazy societal pendulum with humanity sweating it out on "life's" table as the pendulum gets lower and lower...

See? Quite a balance Mother Earth has, huh?!?

My generation has been screaming bloody murder about the environment and global warming since the 60's...

Al Gore's a little too little, and a little too late...

Answer 6

The average American uses 2,000,000,000 trees. Come on you can't actually believe this statistic do you? This is pure bs if you ask me.

Answer 7

Its an impossible task to try to eliminate the use of paper....Hard copies/print outs will always be needed.
Not everyone can afford a laptop or a Tablet

Answer 8

very good point. here are some things we can do:
1. recycle paper products.
2. use less paper products. for example:
use cloth napkins, washcloths, rags instead of napkins and papertowels.
3. when you do use paper, write on both sides, or use the back side of junk mail to write lists or do math or whatever

Answer 9

i try to conserve, but today i had to fax a form to my insurance company. also some resumes had to be faxed to me from washington. i use paper to do machine stenography. i mailed some things in envelopes that were not do-able by email. also i got a lot of paper and envelopes in the mail (mostly things i didn't want). i don't think most of the paper used is for writing things down.

Answer 10

Trees are renewable, they are a crop grown to make recyclable paper.

Laptops are made in huge toxic factories and are hard to recycle.

I think you have lost sight of the obvious.