Why Mother Nature Should Love Cyberspace

By Chris Taylor

A massive environmental catastrophe is predicted, but help arrives in the form of new and utterly unexpected technology. America in the 21st century? No, London in the 19th. Some apocryphal Victorian, so the story goes, looked at the rate at which the number of horses on city streets was increasing and assured his peers that their capital would soon be knee-deep in horse manure. He got it wrong, largely because he failed to predict the imminent rise of the automobile. That brought its own problems, of course, but the point was that Victorians were blindsided by the future--which, as any would-be Cassandra soon learns, is seldom what it appears to be.

Think for a minute: Is there a technology right under our noses that will make many of our own environmental fears moot? Yes, there is. It's called the Internet. According to scores of studies, the dotcom revolution is already starting to have a profound impact on the way industry affects our world.

In the past two years alone, here's what has happened: more people are working from home; companies are using business-to-business (B2B) websites to coordinate their supply chain more efficiently; inventories are lower, meaning warehouses are emptier; and although the paperless office has failed to arrive, online habits are reducing paper needs by millions of tons. "We're still going to have to clean up the environment," says Joseph Romm of Washington's Center for Energy and Climate Solutions. "But the Internet is allowing a type of growth that uses energy and resources better."

You may scoff: Am I really going to save the planet by buying books on Barnesandnoble.com rather than Barnes & Noble at the mall? Actually, you just might. A book purchased online costs about one-sixteenth the energy of one bought in the store. For starters, it takes about 0.1 gal. (0.4 L) of fuel to ship an average 2.5-lb. (1.1-kg) book, whereas your average trip to the mall uses up 1 gal. (3.8 L) of gas. One minute spent driving, in general, uses the same amount of energy as 20 minutes' worth of time sitting at home with your computer.

Then there's all that waste from real-world stores, which need heating and lighting. Online retailers that employ nothing but warehouses have about eight times the number of sales per square foot of space used. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the Internet could make 12.5% of retail space superfluous. That would save around $5 billion worth of energy every year. For everything you buy with a point and a click, the planet thanks you.

The same goes for each newspaper, magazine, catalog and phone directory you read online. A study by the Boston Consulting Group says the Internet will reduce worldwide demand for paper about 2.7 million tons a year by 2003, and this is going to happen despite the fact that we're actually using more paper in our offices than ever. So where do the savings kick in? Well, think about all those letters to Grandma you would send by post if it weren't easier to e-mail her. Or all those catalogs Lands' End doesn't need to send because it's doing such a roaring trade online. Or newspapers. Worldwide, $27 billion in advertising will be siphoned away from your daily read and onto the Internet during the next five years, according to Forrester Research. That includes the 15% of all classified ads--cars, homes and lonely hearts--that are moving online. Your Sunday paper may never feel quite so weighty again. (Whether magazines like the one you're holding will shed a few grams remains to be seen.)

Consider the tremendous savings now that millions of us are able to work from home--or at least, dial into the office more than we drive there. After all, your refrigerator's always on; the heating is always on in the winter. You might as well be there, especially with lightning-fast broadband Internet connections. In the past three years there has been a 12% increase in the number of home-run businesses in the U.S. (not counting folks who quit their job to become full-time auction jockeys on eBay). As for the rest of us working stiffs, our firms may soon be grateful for the time we spend telecommuting. Some are already regulating electricity in their offices remotely, darkening unused areas and saving a ton of cash on energy bills.

The ease of e-commerce can also be a curse. If you demand overnight shipping on those books, it'll take six times the amount of fuel to get them to you as would normal delivery, thanks to jet-fuel costs. But environmental groups welcome the Net's energy efficiency. Says Ned Ford of the Sierra Club's energy committee: "Almost anybody who uses the Internet on a regular basis will feel the savings occurring." Given time, we might start to think of malls and offices as the 20th century version of horse manure--an unpleasant threat that, all of a sudden, got cleaned away.