Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
Speaker 1: tex Stuff from how stuff works dot com. This podcast
Speaker 1: is brought to you by Verizon Hub, the home phone
Speaker 1: reinvented exclusively from Verizon Wireless. Hello there, everybody, and welcome
Speaker 1: to tech Stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and I'm
Speaker 1: an editor here at how stuff works dot com. Sitting
Speaker 1: next to me, as usual, is senior writer Jonathan Strickland.
Speaker 1: Hey there, Wow, it's been a long time since I've
Speaker 1: heard that. Yeah, my World War Worldwide Rather tour is over,
Speaker 1: so I'm back to Hey there, all right, So what
Speaker 1: are we gonna talk about today? Oh? Well, actually today
Speaker 1: we're going to talk about subject that was brought up
Speaker 1: by one of our listeners. This is from Sandra Almost
Speaker 1: said Sarah. I'm sorry, Sandra. Here's what she has to say. Hi,
Speaker 1: Chris and Jonathan. First, let me say I really enjoy
Speaker 1: your podcast and listen to every episode. Thanks for all
Speaker 1: the hard work. I'm learning a lot and it's mostly painless.
Speaker 1: I bet that has something to do with the jokes
Speaker 1: we tell. I'm all right, I'm writing to suggest an
Speaker 1: idea for a podcast. Over the last few years, we've
Speaker 1: moved to doing everything online, from banking and paying bills
Speaker 1: to entertainment and socializing. While it's true we can save
Speaker 1: paper and gas by doing more online, I think it's
Speaker 1: misleading to think it's more energy efficient overall. I recently
Speaker 1: read an article that said we have to build five
Speaker 1: new power plants every year just to support the increased
Speaker 1: energy needed for I T alone. That would be bad
Speaker 1: enough if server farms operated at peak efficiency, but apparently
Speaker 1: they're incredibly inefficient, so much of this energy is wasted.
Speaker 1: I'd like to learn more about the impact of our
Speaker 1: bandwidth hungry lifestyle and its impact on the environment and
Speaker 1: our economy. I hope you'll consider this for a future podcast.
Speaker 1: Thanks for considering it, Sandra, Well, Sandra, thanks a lot
Speaker 1: for writing in. That's an ex silent email, and we're
Speaker 1: gonna try and tackle this. It's it turns out this
Speaker 1: is a really tricky subject to to talk about, not
Speaker 1: because of any controversy or anything like that, but just
Speaker 1: because when you start to look at the whole issue,
Speaker 1: you begin to realize the picture is a little larger
Speaker 1: than what you first thought. Right. Oh, definitely and then
Speaker 1: you look at that and you're like, wait, wait, wait,
Speaker 1: wait wait, if I have to consider this, then I
Speaker 1: need to consider this next element. So the picture gets
Speaker 1: a little bigger, and it gets bigger and bigger until
Speaker 1: you end up hiding under your desk and weeping softly
Speaker 1: speak for yourself. Okay, Well, Josh, Josh knows I often
Speaker 1: actually will hide under his desk because he's very comforting. Yes,
Speaker 1: I understand. Yeah, As it turns out, we sort of
Speaker 1: worked ourselves into a hole, so to speak, because, um,
Speaker 1: we rely on both paper and computer technology. Um, and
Speaker 1: neither one of them is particularly environmentally friendly, and neither
Speaker 1: one of them is particularly harm so much more than
Speaker 1: the other. Yeah, they're harmful in different ways. Yeah they're yeah, exactly,
Speaker 1: and they're good and bad things about both. So, um,
Speaker 1: I was gonna tackle print and paper to start with,
Speaker 1: if you don't mind. Okay. So I was reading up
Speaker 1: on a couple of different subjects, one of the which was,
Speaker 1: you know, how much uh energy it takes to create
Speaker 1: a book? Um. There was another one that was talking
Speaker 1: about how much energy it takes to make a ream
Speaker 1: of paper, And you know, it's it's an interesting thing
Speaker 1: to read about and really again, you have to think
Speaker 1: about the whole big picture, not just how many trees
Speaker 1: you had to cut down or you know, the processing
Speaker 1: plant for the trees to turn the lumber into paper. Um,
Speaker 1: there are a lot of different things you have to
Speaker 1: think about, like after after the papers made, it has
Speaker 1: to be shipped somewhere. When it's being shipped somewhere, that
Speaker 1: that the fuel is going to put an impact on
Speaker 1: the environment. The uh, just the travel and wear and
Speaker 1: tear puts an impact. I mean eventually you start looking
Speaker 1: at this like a domino effect, right, Like okay, well
Speaker 1: that also means you have to maintain the trucks and
Speaker 1: the trains and wait a minute, that also means that
Speaker 1: if it goes into a store, you have to pay
Speaker 1: for things like lights in the store. Like where does
Speaker 1: it end? Is the question? But in general. There was
Speaker 1: a study done by the Book Industry Study Group and
Speaker 1: Green Press Initiative not too long ago where they try
Speaker 1: to estimate how much carbon is produced through the publication
Speaker 1: of a single book. The conclusion that they came to
Speaker 1: was that each book contributes about eight point eight five
Speaker 1: pounds of carbon. So every single book you see, essentially
Speaker 1: that's what it took to make that book possible, including
Speaker 1: you know, coffee table books. Yeah, well, I mean I
Speaker 1: think it's I think it's an average because, yeah, I'm saying,
Speaker 1: like the monster at the end of this book probably
Speaker 1: doesn't have as big an environmental impact as say, the
Speaker 1: Lord of the Rings. Now impact upon my life equally huge,
Speaker 1: but not upon the environment. Um And they also estimated
Speaker 1: that the publishing industry generates about twelve point for million
Speaker 1: metric tons of carbon per year. It's a lot of carbon.
Speaker 1: Significant And now you have to also remember that when
Speaker 1: you're creating paper, obviously you're creating paper from lumber. You're
Speaker 1: gonna have to get that lumber somewhere, so you have
Speaker 1: to cut down trees. And trees are what we call
Speaker 1: a carbon sink. So trees help take carbon out of
Speaker 1: the environment, mostly through carbon dioxide. Um And So if
Speaker 1: you start cutting down the trees, not only are you
Speaker 1: in the process that you're going through to create whatever
Speaker 1: it is you're creating in this case paper, not only
Speaker 1: are you creating carbon that's going into the environment, you're
Speaker 1: taking away the the ability to absorb that carbon because
Speaker 1: you're removing some of the trees. So that's that's not
Speaker 1: good for the environment. And uh, and we've been consuming
Speaker 1: more and more paper products, um as the years have
Speaker 1: gone by. I read an interesting report by green pdf. Now, granted,
Speaker 1: you have to take this with a grain of salt.
Speaker 1: You have to always consider the source of the information
Speaker 1: you're receiving. Um. If you're receiving information from an environmental
Speaker 1: like a pro environment kind of source, you have to remember,
Speaker 1: all right, well, let's look around see if there's any
Speaker 1: other independent sources that verify this information. Same thing if
Speaker 1: you read from a pro industry source. Right, absolutely, so
Speaker 1: you want to be far as much as the time
Speaker 1: as you can. Right. You don't wanna you don't want
Speaker 1: to just assume that the information you're reading is in fact, uh,
Speaker 1: completely accurate. You need to kind of look around. But
Speaker 1: what green pdf said was that on average, uh, each
Speaker 1: person in the world consumes about a hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: three pounds of paper per year, and of the paper
Speaker 1: consumed is used in printing documents, and the average office
Speaker 1: employee uses seven reams of paper per year. All right,
Speaker 1: so here's some more figures for you. One point one
Speaker 1: billion trees are cut down for this paper supply each year,
Speaker 1: fifty million metric tons of lumber. And uh you think
Speaker 1: each tree removes about one ton one metric ton of
Speaker 1: carbon dioxide from the atmosphere each year. Uh. And each
Speaker 1: tree can make about a hundred and seventy three realms
Speaker 1: of paper. Okay, so there's a lot of a lot
Speaker 1: of figures, facts and figures for you. A realm of paper,
Speaker 1: by the way, UM, producing it dumps about twelve pounds
Speaker 1: of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. UM. So you know
Speaker 1: obviously that's a big environmental impact. UM. I mean, trees
Speaker 1: are a renewable resource. You can grow more uh trees
Speaker 1: if you need to. And the thing is a lot
Speaker 1: of environmental organizations will tell you that they there is
Speaker 1: some difference between trees taken from a sustainable forest versus
Speaker 1: old growth trees. And there are some companies that are
Speaker 1: I mean, if you really want to go looking for it,
Speaker 1: you can find lists of companies that will tell you
Speaker 1: the ones who use sustainable lumber versus old growth forests. UM.
Speaker 1: You know, if you are so inclined to do that. UM.
Speaker 1: The thing also that I you know that I think
Speaker 1: that we should mention is the chemicals, because if you're
Speaker 1: creating say a craft paper bag, you know, brown paper
Speaker 1: bag that you would see at a grocery store. You know,
Speaker 1: that's pretty much that doesn't really require a lot of
Speaker 1: of coloring. But if you want bleached white paper that
Speaker 1: that you'd get for you know, for example, school notebook
Speaker 1: paper or um paper for your laser printer, that takes
Speaker 1: bleach and those chemicals go into a water source someplace
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, Um, you know. I I
Speaker 1: remember actually driving across Tennessee, UH and seeing signs an
Speaker 1: environmental organization and taking out signs near the Pigeon River
Speaker 1: because there was a paper plant upstream and they they
Speaker 1: used the billboard and it changed ever ever so often,
Speaker 1: but it would actually you know, point out that this
Speaker 1: particular paper company was you know, dumping chemicals into the water.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, it affects a lot of things.
Speaker 1: It's not just you know, the trees being cut down
Speaker 1: in the carbon dock side. It has another impact on
Speaker 1: the environment just from the actual production, the other costs
Speaker 1: of production, if you will. Sure. Yeah, I I grew
Speaker 1: up in uh near Lake Lanier, um in in Hull County, Georgia,
Speaker 1: and UH and we had paper mills, not too far
Speaker 1: from the house. So when the wind was blowing in
Speaker 1: a certain direction, you'd get that lovely oh yeah scent
Speaker 1: of the paper mill. It was blowing in the other direction,
Speaker 1: chicken farms, so it was blowing in one particular direction.
Speaker 1: You got the best of both worlds. Oh yeah, and
Speaker 1: then you know, you get the environmental impact of both
Speaker 1: of those, right, yeah, tasting, So that that's kind of
Speaker 1: the whole paper thing. So we're talking, you know, and
Speaker 1: of course there are ways you can you can reduce
Speaker 1: the environmental impact of using paper. If you're using paper
Speaker 1: that that is certified as carbon neutral, arguably that means
Speaker 1: that the company is doing something to offset the fact
Speaker 1: that they're taking trees. Uh there, you know, they're cutting
Speaker 1: them down, maybe they're planning more, maybe they're buying carbon offsets.
Speaker 1: But if you have a carbon neutral kind of solution
Speaker 1: to your paper, you might not be making quite as
Speaker 1: big an impact on the environment. Now, there's still other elements.
Speaker 1: You know, you were still talking about the production and
Speaker 1: the shipping, shipping, just the you know, just just the
Speaker 1: energy you need to run a plant. I mean that
Speaker 1: that that energy that's coming from that electricity. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's still things that are going to affect the environment,
Speaker 1: whether or not you're using like totally recycled paper or whatever.
Speaker 1: That that's true. UM, And of course there are costs
Speaker 1: environmental costs and um financial costs to recycling to it
Speaker 1: does help, of course. So if you buy recycled paper, UM,
Speaker 1: that encourages them to continue making recycled paper and to
Speaker 1: recycled paper when you you know, are done using it. UM.
Speaker 1: You can always use the backsides of paper. Try to
Speaker 1: duplex print if you're going to have to print something.
Speaker 1: Here's one of my big pet peeves. If you work
Speaker 1: in an office where people do a lot of printing,
Speaker 1: you're gonna see a giant stack of stuff that people
Speaker 1: printed out but never came to pick up. Don't be
Speaker 1: one of those people. If you're going to print something,
Speaker 1: print it because you need it and you're actually gonna
Speaker 1: use it. That that's just one of my big pet peeves.
Speaker 1: You know, I I find that I need to use
Speaker 1: paper from time to time. I try not to use
Speaker 1: tons of it ha ha literally but no figuratively speaking.
Speaker 1: And the thing is, you know, I go over there
Speaker 1: and I see that big pile of paper, and it
Speaker 1: stress me crazy. Um, so they understand that. The one
Speaker 1: thing though, that I that I find interesting about paper
Speaker 1: when I think, well I'm going to shift to online,
Speaker 1: is once the paper is produced, it's produced. It's it's there.
Speaker 1: It's not doing anything. It's not you know, contributing to
Speaker 1: or or detracting from the CEO two levels of the planet.
Speaker 1: So I mean, if you have paper and are using
Speaker 1: it responsibly and not over using it, then you know
Speaker 1: it's a sustainable resource. So there's something to be said
Speaker 1: for a piece of paper as opposed to say, a computer,
Speaker 1: which is going to draw a power constantly. I mean,
Speaker 1: unless you've unplugged it or you're using a uh one
Speaker 1: of the power strips that can prevent vampire power from
Speaker 1: going on your your computer is always drawing some power.
Speaker 1: Vampire power for the uninitiated, is um say you have
Speaker 1: your computer plugged into a power strip and you've turned
Speaker 1: it off so that you can go to work the computer.
Speaker 1: That is right, right, that's a good point. That's a
Speaker 1: good point. You turn your computer off, that left the
Speaker 1: power strip on your computer is still going to be
Speaker 1: drawing some power. As a matter of fact, if you
Speaker 1: if you have a desktop computer like a tower and
Speaker 1: you take the side of it off for the front
Speaker 1: of it off where you can actually see, you'll probably
Speaker 1: see a couple of the little LEDs inside that tell
Speaker 1: you that there's something going on. Um. It's basically keeping
Speaker 1: the machine running. It. The same could be said for
Speaker 1: your TV. People don't want to wait for the TV
Speaker 1: to come on, so the manufacturers built in you know, uh,
Speaker 1: the capacity to store energy so that you can turn
Speaker 1: it on and it pops on very quickly. Well, the
Speaker 1: thing is, it takes electricity to do that, you know,
Speaker 1: very low flow, and that's called vampire power. If you
Speaker 1: turn the power strip off, it stops drawing power. Unplugging
Speaker 1: it will really stop it. Yeah and um. And and
Speaker 1: then we should point out that even the vampire power,
Speaker 1: although it is you know, a constant thing, um, it's
Speaker 1: not drawing nearly the same amount of power as your
Speaker 1: computer would when it's running, especially if it's running like
Speaker 1: full speed, like running a very heavy application. UM. So
Speaker 1: when we're talking about computers, were really looking at things
Speaker 1: like energy efficiency. Uh, you know, whether or not you
Speaker 1: are using any of the sleep or idle modes, or
Speaker 1: if you're turning your computer off. Um. And also not
Speaker 1: only that. But when you're talking about online applications now
Speaker 1: you have to look at, as Sandra pointed out, data
Speaker 1: centers and data centers. They okay, for those who don't know,
Speaker 1: a data center is essentially a collection of servers, and
Speaker 1: it could be a small center. And when when I
Speaker 1: say small, most people would think of a small center.
Speaker 1: Like most people the I T. Baz would say, like,
Speaker 1: a hundred servers is kind of small. Google has has
Speaker 1: data centers that with the servers that number in the
Speaker 1: thousands and tens of thousands, and they've got these enormous
Speaker 1: buildings their size of several warehouses put together, filled with
Speaker 1: these machines all running, their generating tons of heat, they're
Speaker 1: consuming lots of electricity, and they always have to be
Speaker 1: on because if they go off, your service goes away.
Speaker 1: That's that's no more Gmail. That's no more access to
Speaker 1: any of the files that you've stored in the cloud,
Speaker 1: that's no more Search exactly. Yeah. So the thing about
Speaker 1: that is that those machines are constantly running, and there
Speaker 1: are probably at least hundreds of thousands, if not millions,
Speaker 1: of machines doing that at anyone given time. And the
Speaker 1: Internet is made up of computers talking to one another, right,
Speaker 1: and and a computer running, uh, you know, actively running
Speaker 1: can consume anywhere between I don't know what, like like
Speaker 1: a hundred and something wats per hour to up to
Speaker 1: three hundred depending on the machine, maybe even more, I
Speaker 1: guess if you've got to really power hungry device. But
Speaker 1: so you gotta think there are these thousands and thousands
Speaker 1: of machines that are running all the time. If you're
Speaker 1: using a lot of online services, UM, then you're contributing
Speaker 1: to the need for more machines, which means that you know,
Speaker 1: you're indirectly you are contributing to an environmental impact. So, uh,
Speaker 1: what what can we do about this? Well, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you don't use it, I don't think they're going
Speaker 1: to be fewer computers out there. But what we can
Speaker 1: really hope for is that these companies will start looking
Speaker 1: into ways to um to power their data centers in
Speaker 1: a renewable fashion that's not dependent upon you know, traditional
Speaker 1: electricity power plants to generate electricity. Google's doing that. As
Speaker 1: a matter of FACTUM, I have some family up in
Speaker 1: the Northwest, and um Google has they generated headlines generated
Speaker 1: sorry for the pun generated headlines. A few a couple
Speaker 1: of years ago because they were building a giant data
Speaker 1: center UM in a town near Portlands called the Dolls UM.
Speaker 1: The thing is, you'd think, wow, that's you know that
Speaker 1: you look at the the Google Earth view of this
Speaker 1: place and you go, man, that's got to have tons
Speaker 1: and tons of computers. And I'm and I'm sure it does. However,
Speaker 1: it's also along the Columbia River and the from what
Speaker 1: I understand that that data center draws a lot of
Speaker 1: its power from water, right, hydroelectric power exactly, So you know,
Speaker 1: there are there are things that they're doing there and uh,
Speaker 1: I believe a solar power to to try to offset
Speaker 1: some of the uh fossil fuel costs the electricity there.
Speaker 1: And and also I just wrote a blog post about
Speaker 1: this recently. As of the recording of this podcast. By
Speaker 1: the time this goes live, it will actually be old news,
Speaker 1: but you can always go back and look at it. UM.
Speaker 1: But I did a blog post about this patent that
Speaker 1: Google applied for and was granted for a floating data center,
Speaker 1: and it's essentially a data center on a boat, and
Speaker 1: the full design incorporates UM some devices that generate electricity
Speaker 1: through the motion of water so both waves and tidal motions,
Speaker 1: and UM and also uses the water as a coolant
Speaker 1: to keep the servers cool, so it doesn't have to
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't. It can just utilize the power
Speaker 1: of the sea to keep it going and it's not
Speaker 1: drawing power from a power plant like most data centers are. Well, um,
Speaker 1: you know, Google actually has its own organization in house
Speaker 1: that looks at renewable energy sources. It's called ARIS lesson
Speaker 1: C and UM I actually this had come up before
Speaker 1: we had started talked about the idea of writing an
Speaker 1: article or doing a podcast about this subject. Before UM
Speaker 1: and UM I got some information on that. Um Eric Tetzel,
Speaker 1: who's the program manager for ARIS lesson C, said that
Speaker 1: a Google search takes three ten thousands of a kill
Speaker 1: a lot, which generates about point two grams of c
Speaker 1: O two every time you search Google. So you know,
Speaker 1: it's small, it's a very small impact. However, you know
Speaker 1: how many people are searching Google every day any point
Speaker 1: of the day. Yeah, sure, so, I mean if you
Speaker 1: think about that and how much that search energy is,
Speaker 1: you know the cost of that search energy. Google and
Speaker 1: other companies have good reason to look into other sources
Speaker 1: because I mean environmental impact aside, it's got a financial impact.
Speaker 1: So if they could find some renewable sources, especially non
Speaker 1: polluting ones that you know, make them look better, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's a win exactly, it's a it's a good
Speaker 1: move for them. And and just like we were talking
Speaker 1: with the paper, with all the additional factors that you
Speaker 1: have to take into account, the same things true with computers.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you're ultimately you're gonna have to think, Okay,
Speaker 1: what did it cost environmentally speaking to produce this computer?
Speaker 1: What did it cost environmentally speaking to build the data centers? Um?
Speaker 1: You know, it's it's these are costs that are essentially
Speaker 1: one time costs for per machine, just like a book
Speaker 1: is a one time cost. But it's like, again, you
Speaker 1: start looking at this big picture situation where everything gets
Speaker 1: linked in together, and there's there's not really an easy
Speaker 1: solution because there's no real way where you can just
Speaker 1: you can't point to one thing and say this is
Speaker 1: the source of the problem because it's so much larger
Speaker 1: than that. Yeah, yeah, and uh, I mean there's more
Speaker 1: than the carbon footprint of manufacturing a computer, let alone
Speaker 1: taking it apart. I mean, so many of them end
Speaker 1: up in landfills because people don't recycle them. There's let,
Speaker 1: there's cadmium, There's all kinds of stuff there, uh, and
Speaker 1: it gets into the groundwater. There's the environmental impact of that. Right.
Speaker 1: The more often you replace your computer, uh, and the
Speaker 1: more computers you own that need to be replaced, that
Speaker 1: just adds to that impact. So there's something to be
Speaker 1: said uh for that too. So what we're getting down
Speaker 1: to here is that there's no easy answer of saying
Speaker 1: is paper better than using a computer or vice versa. Um.
Speaker 1: What we can say is there are certain behaviors you
Speaker 1: can follow that will help decrease your impact on the environment.
Speaker 1: And if everyone does this that that does make a difference. UM.
Speaker 1: But we can't, you know, we can't just sit there
Speaker 1: and sign off on one versus the other. So using
Speaker 1: things like recycled paper, um, you know, only using paper
Speaker 1: when you need to, that kind of thing, as well
Speaker 1: as UH, if you're using your computer and you're going
Speaker 1: to be away from your computer for a couple of hours,
Speaker 1: it's okay to go ahead and turn that off. Uh.
Speaker 1: The everyone want to worry is about whether or not
Speaker 1: the spike that you were that you experienced when you
Speaker 1: first turn a computer on, if that if that negates
Speaker 1: the effect you would have of turning it off. In
Speaker 1: most cases, it does not. In most cases, especially the
Speaker 1: longer you keep it off, the greater the benefit is.
Speaker 1: So if you are going to bed at night and
Speaker 1: you're not gonna be up and using the computer for
Speaker 1: eight or ten hours, turning it off is probably the
Speaker 1: best choice. And if you can't turn it off, or
Speaker 1: you know you just you can't, you're just not going
Speaker 1: to Using a sleep mode um can also really really
Speaker 1: help out. A sleep mode might be just a couple
Speaker 1: of percentage points of what the active mode would be.
Speaker 1: And don't assume that a screen saver is the same
Speaker 1: thing as a sleep mode, because yeah, it actually can
Speaker 1: generate a lot of it can drain a lot of
Speaker 1: power because I mean, you know you're running you're running
Speaker 1: a program, is what you're doing, and it's displaying something
Speaker 1: a monitor. So if you have a desktop computer and
Speaker 1: a monitor is keeping the monitor a week, right, So
Speaker 1: don't just you know, it'll go to screen saver and
Speaker 1: that'll that'll save money. No, go ahead and put it
Speaker 1: onto sleep mode. I mean it might mean that it
Speaker 1: takes a little longer for it to boot up, but
Speaker 1: it you know, that's a small price to pay, I mean,
Speaker 1: and you'll be saving money on electricity bills. Yep. You
Speaker 1: can also unplug a lot of your electronics when you're
Speaker 1: not in use, or you can get smart power strips
Speaker 1: that will do it for you. They can. A lot
Speaker 1: of the power strips now come with the ability. Now
Speaker 1: they're more expensive, I should point that out, um, but
Speaker 1: they tell the ability to go, oh, well, this thing
Speaker 1: hasn't been on for half an hour, I need to
Speaker 1: just turn this off. And and it's an upfront cost
Speaker 1: that eventually will be offset by the savings you you make,
Speaker 1: assuming that you know you're using it appropriately and you
Speaker 1: know that it's that it's that it's a device that's
Speaker 1: going to last a few years. It may take a while,
Speaker 1: because when we're talking about savings, we're talking about you know,
Speaker 1: maybe a couple of dollars per year, which doesn't sound
Speaker 1: like you know, it's not not really that remarkable, but
Speaker 1: you are making a much lower impact on the environ
Speaker 1: that's true, that's true. I think what we really need
Speaker 1: to emphasize is that what you do, you need to
Speaker 1: do responsibly, you know, if you if you behave responsibly,
Speaker 1: not wastefully. Um, you know, I don't think any of
Speaker 1: us are going to be able to give up our
Speaker 1: paper and computers anytime soon, and they're just too embedded
Speaker 1: in our our daily lives. I think the best thing
Speaker 1: to do is sort of mitigate and um, you know,
Speaker 1: find ways that we can contribute to, uh, reducing our
Speaker 1: carbon footprints and maybe the global carbon footprint as a
Speaker 1: as a whole. Sure I agree. Alright, Well, Sandra, thank
Speaker 1: you so much for writing in. That's a great discussion,
Speaker 1: so we really appreciate it. Uh. If any of you
Speaker 1: wish to write us, please do so tech stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com and remember you can go
Speaker 1: to how stuff works dot com to learn about everything
Speaker 1: we're talking about, green initiatives, technology, all sorts of great topics.
Speaker 1: Just check that out how stuff works dot com and
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