Democracy vs The Environment
Here’s a question inspired by this mail from a WriteToThem user:
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Subject: yes but….
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2006
My MEP did respond by sending 13 sheets of best quality paper – I wanted her to respond by EMAIL not waste a forest like this! I was horrified and emailed her to tell her so. In fact her answer to my question was simply ‘NO’ so the 13 sheets were a smokescreen ! Perhaps this advice could be passed to all MEPS thinking of sending out large wads of paper
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Now, we could encourage representatives to email or phone rather than write back to their constituents on paper. However, if we did so there are two issues:
1) Is it actually more environmentally friendly to use a PC/phone than write a letter?
2) Is it worth annoying the representatives who are used to writing back in their own preferred manner, perhaps even leading to fewer constituents getting help?
Could you substantiate the question as to whether it is more enviromentally friendly to send e-mail rather than a letter? How could it be less environmentally friendly?
Well, I was thinking about all the electricity, chemicals, plasics etc it takes to build and maintain an IT infrastructure through which to send emails.
So how do you plan to quantify the transport costs for the paper from forest to MEP and then to constituent, the manufacturing costs for each bit of paper (including the envelope and the stamp), and the environemntal costs of the ink, and the computer the letter is written on (I don’t recall ever getting a hand-written letter from an MP)?
In my personal experience, I’ve contacted a number of representatives, and I always get an e-mail reply from MEPs, MSPs and committee members, but my MP likes to send an acknowledgement e-mail, sometimes an acknowledgement letter, and a full letter to respond to my queries. I’m sure she’s not the only MP to use the worst of both worlds.
If nothing else, I’d like to see some sort of statistic added to the responsiveness survey that would give some idea of how likely a representative is to respond by e-mail. It would be one extra question on the WriteToThem feedback survey, but it could easily be optional.
OTTOMH:
Presumably in practical terms the question is:
-What /new/ resources will be used by asking an MP / MEP etc to reply by e-mail or letter?
Given the assumption that most MPs / MEPs will have a computer switched on in their offices when they are there
and
The computer will probably be used to write / print whatever paper reply they send
and
Most network routers etc are always on and each set of packets across them doesn’t noticably affect power consumption…
I would assume (though it may well be that my assumption of the infrastructure already being in place is wrong…) that e-mail for replies is far more efficient.
In terms of what WriteToThem could do on this – perhaps a few possibilities:
1. Let people know when sending a message through WriteToThem whether their message will be sent by e-mail or fax (mainly when this is due to the e-mail address not being known at the moment – so that those concerned will help contribute e-mail addresses over fax numbers)
2. Offer people the chance to select a prefered method of reply on messages which could be tagged on as a footer to messages to representatives. E.g. ‘I would prefer to recieve a reply by [E-mail/Post/Fax/Phone]’
3. Find / develop a guide to representatives on effective use of E-mail to keep in touch with constituents – and mention this in a one-off / footer message to representatives
-Given that in many cases replies by letter over e-mail are probably due to some of:
a) a lack of confidence in using e-mail (is it made clear to representatives at present that the e-mail address a message comes from is verified as correct and active? – as just a few bounced messages from replying to messages from contact forms which fail to verify e-mail addresses can be enough to put people off…)
b) habbit of always replying by letter
c) process where a message is printed and given to an assistant to actually reply to
d) where the reply is a stock reply already printed out / ready to print
1) Is it actually more environmentally friendly to use a PC/phone than write a letter?
PC was not made to send just one email, it’s used for thousands of other tasks. Electricity used when writing an email is nothing compared to energy used to deliver that letter
2) Is it worth annoying the representatives who are used to writing back in their own preferred manner, perhaps even leading to fewer constituents getting help?
Is it worth annoing people who have to listen to the noise of lorries from the Royal Mail and breathe its exhalations just because some representatives do not know how to use email?
Use of paper raises demand for limited forests, but these forests reduce atmopheric carbon levels, recycled paper or email would be better.
Lets face it though, this is all a side-issue compared to the thousands of tons of carbon that humans pollute the atmosphere with every year with fossil fuel consumption.