Trees play a vital role in our survival and is important for the existence of life on planet Earth.  Tough we all have witnessed the struggle from environmental groups from all around the world including United Nations, still the effort to make trees central to our living is still missing.  Ideally this would mean not just reduction in cutting trees for making paper but more towards love and care for them as well.  For example, planting new trees and nurturing them is a great way to care our environment.  When this becomes a regular practice, the care for environment comes to us naturally without someone having to monitor us. 

Roughly about 30% of our planet is covered with trees.  However, this is a small percentage and given the rate of depletion of forests, experts from all over the world have warned us about the consequences such as floods, climatic change, just to mention a few.  It is estimated that by 2040, the forest lands would become half of that what we see today.  This would mean not only disappearance of trees but also the animal species.  The trees destroyed from forests finds place in homes, illegal sales for creating artwork in case of wood such as Ebony wood.  But most of the consumption goes for making paper which is one of the major consumers of trees.  Trees of different kinds including some rare species are used in the manufacture of paper.

But with the upbringing we have experienced in all parts of the world, life without paper is hard to imagine.  But this might soon become a reality since there should be a hard stop to practices that harm our environment and posing a threat to our own survival.  The turn of the millennium witnessed the disappearance of photo films due to the digital age.  Now the world of photography knows only digital.  Several manufacturers of the photo films across the world were out of business by 2003-04.    We are still in the digital age.  So how can technology assist us in saving our trees?

The practice should start from schools where children would require several books to help them learn concepts.  There are several publishers that publish works on each subject.  These publishers should be encouraged to publish all books in the digital form than a hard copy.  The recycling of paper is also not an environmental friendly process.  Therefore, these options are not really going to help in the long term.  Converting all text books to digital form or by using tablets would present several advantages. For example, the tablets could store text books, class notes and store these in the cloud network which could be accessed by students. 

Similarly, in the industry, paper free work environments should be encouraged.  For example, all office notes could be digitally written on a tablet screen and saved as user notes.    This way excessive or over production of paper could be stopped.    As such the paper industry creates wastes in excess due to over production.  Besides academia and the industry, government is a major consumer of paper for printing documents, notes and books.  These accumulate over time and some of these documents never get to see the light of the day as they perish in the shelves in those offices.  Thus, recycling opportunities are also lost. 

By converting all the books in digital form and libraries in digital from, a large percentage of trees could be saved.  But a commitment from all corners of the society is required for this to succeed.  By mere words or some small initiatives, the situation is not really going to improve.  By putting a stop or fully migrating to fully digital forms supported through regulatory norms, saving of trees around the globe could be achieved.   Time is running fast and we need to act now to regain control and bring back the lost habitat.

Image credit (Images 1 & 2):  earthobservatory.nasa.gov