Earth Day: Saving Paper April 21, 2010
Posted by 11strojo in Uncategorized.trackback
In Canadian Academy Tuesday, the 20th of April. We had a non print day. Which led us to saving a ton of paper. As seen from the graph below, the benefit of using paper is a higher private benefit then a social benefit. What we are forgetting when we are using paper is that everytime we are using paper, the society has to pay for it. Indirectly ofcourse. There are so many processes that are included in making paper which is costing the society due to their polution. Ultimately what Canadian Academy was trying to do with this non-print day, was to decrease the marginal private benefit line and cut down the cost the society has to pay for our overconsumption of paper. The question remains if it really was that useful, considering that people only printed out the papers that they could not print out the day after.
A good analysis of a negative externality of consumption. What is your opinion, is there another solution?
I agree with you; non-printing day was a good attempt at reducing the negative externality of printing paper in the short run, but do you think there could be any way of reducing it in the long run? As you said, on that day people did not print but they printed everything out the day before or the day after. Do you think there could be a way to shift the MPB closer to the MSB in the long run? In your opinion, would advertisement work?