Carbon and ecological footprints of a magazine : Print vs. tablet editions

Information and communication technology (ICT), in competition with traditional applications, is providingnew ways to access media content. Similar to print media, ICT-based media has environmental benefits andburdens alike. The overall goal of the present study is to assess the potential environmental impacts”’from a lifecycle perspective”’of a print magazine with its electronic version read on tablets. Important goals are to identifywhich activities give rise to the main impacts, in both print and tablet editions, and to identify the key factorsinfluencing the overall environmental impacts, in both editions. Moreover, data gaps and uncertainties areaddressed.The methodology used in the study is life cycle assessment (LCA). The environmental impacts assessedinclude climate change, cumulative energy/exergy demand, metal depletion, photochemical oxidant formation,particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification, freshwater/marine eutrophication and fossil depletion.The results indicate that it is hard to compare print and tablet editions of a magazine due to difficulties indefining the function, and that different functional units indicate different preferences in terms of environmentalimpacts. Also, differences between emerging (low number of readers and low reading time per copy) andmature (high number of readers and higher reading time per copy) tablet versions leads to various results in thecomparison between print and tablet versions.The studied tablet version in its emerging stage gives rise to higher potential environmental impacts per readerthan the print version; however with an assumed mature tablet version the impacts are generally lower perreader. This illustrates clearly the importance of the number of readers to spread the environmental impactsover.QC 20130116