PRINTED MEDIA IN THE ERA OF INFORMATION T ECHNOLOGY - HOW ENVIRONMENTALLY SOUND ARE ELECTRONIC NEWSPAPERS

The environmental friendliness of paper products is a topic of today's ecology related discussion. Nowadays, this discussion also affects th e printed media such as newspapers and magazines. Besides the conventi onal method of distributing information through printed media, it is a lso possible to publish them electronically. Since information technol ogy is developing fast and internet access is widely available, electr onic media are of an increasing significance. However, the environment al impacts of electronic media-particularly in comparison with printed media - have not been part of the discussion. The paper compares the environmental friendliness of printed newspapers and electronically pu blished newspapers by using life cycle assessment methods. For both pr oducts the environmental burdens in terms of energy consumption, airbo rne and waterborne emissions and dumped waste occurring over the whole life cycle are analysed and compared.