Precious Papersby | 20-04-2018 23:08 |
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 You know what they say: Saving for a rainy day. In our culture, we are taught since young to form a good habit of saving money. However, saving and recording money was a tremendously difficult task for someone like me who excels little in bookkeeping. The scattered bank statements from my account made it no less confusing. However, it all changed when in 2014, I registered for an online account that allows me the convenience of viewing, monitoring and downloading an updated e-statement that is available at all time and everywhere. For once, I experience a full financial control over my life, and it suddenly seemed strange that in the past, my life was made so troubling by some objects as thin as a paper bank statement. Paper is the most important invention in the whole of our human civilization history and most of them are made from trees. Grinding the tree bulks, their cellulose fibres are separated from a gluey component called lignin, after which they can be reorganized, bleached and processed with chemicals to form papers. However, one must note that the highly mechanized production of paper is not as ecologically friendly as it is simple. Paper mills release greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, and wastewater that contains organic matters like nitrogen and organochlorides into water streams, potentially disrupting the chemical balance of water ecosystem. Paper inks also have bioactive material harmful to our bodies. Moreover, the production of paper encourages logging in general, more so when this industry is not well regulated. A tree is estimated to produce about 20 reams of A4 paper sheets (1 ream=500 sheets). The weight of a paper sheet is about 4.5 grams, and one ream approximately 2.25kg. In a realistic perspective, Malaysians use 380,000 tons of writing and printing paper in 2009. With this calculation, that equates to 160 million reams of paper a year, which means we have chopped down at least 8 million trees a year to sustain our consumption! In this process, we are losing our precious forests. Forests are important to keep, as they are the biggest carbon absorber after oceans and house 80% of our land biodiversity. One of the best ways to save our forests is to reduce our reliance on papers. This means that we must both recycle papers, while reducing its use. It is important that the act of recycling paper and reducing its use depends not only on regulations and incentives, but as well as social culture, behavioural change and cultivating an environmentally friendly mindset. In Malaysia, a non-profit organization called Community Recycling for Charity (CRC) was founded in 2008 and has been successful in promoting voluntary recycling among the society by locating 179 bins in Klang Valley, the most populous region in Malaysia, allowing easy access for us, while donating their financial gains to people in need. Co-sharing workspace would be among the first places we could transform. In the era of rising cost of papers, by digitizing paper records into PDF files, this saves money, saves space and prevents clutters in offices, increasing worker?s efficiency. The impact of such initiatives can also be increased by coupling with governmental effort by penalizing illegal loggers, introducing taxation of unnecessary paper use and rewarding corporates that have a low carbon footprint. More regulatory bodies must be set to monitor the activities of paper mills and printing industry. I have recently conversed with the manager from NetsEco, a local company that has received multiple recognition from various bodies for printing with vegetable-based ink on recycled papers. Another notable example is the initiative from banks in Malaysia. Maybank introduced M2U, an online financial portal from which I have personally benefited, with its improved and up-to-date account statements. Going paperless may be difficult to start on a large scale, but the increasing accessibility to smartphones certainly helps. In Malaysia, with smartphone ownership projected to be increasing from 16.54% in 2015 to 20.96% in 2018, we could also promote the use of e-wallets and QR codes, which not only promotes an accurate financial book-keeping, but also removes the need for a physical paper transaction receipt while purchasing in supermarkets and paying bills. Going paperless also transforms how education works in Malaysia. During my time as a medical student, instead of hand-drawing all body parts, I rely heavily on e-books and Youtube to study about anatomy. Instead of distributing academic materials in papers, all my lectures in university were uploaded onto the study portal for everyone to view, and often encourages us to do so. It has become an autonomous choice, rather than a set-in-stone practice for us, to decide on whether we want to study online or in prints. Furthermore, The Malaccan Technical University Malaysia also experienced an ease of communication and increased workforce productivity, with the introduction of a cloud platform, removing the need to contact one another with mundane paper works. Going paperless can also help to entirely offset transport fees and related fuel costs. Before 2012, newspaper had to be flown over from Peninsular Malaysia to Borneo, resulting in an increase in distribution cost and consequently a higher retail price. Soon after, newspaper like New Straits Times (NST) and Berita Harian were being printed in Sabah locally. With the global transition and preference for digitalization, NST has gone digital in Sabah, becoming cheaper and more cost-effective. On another hand, as a loyal reader of The Economist, with every issue costing RM30.00 ($7) in Peninsular Malaysia, I am recently considering a switch as a digital reader as a new offer is introduced that, on top of many other perks, now, 12 weeks of digital issues only cost RM75, averaging RM6 ($1.5) for each! A great idea for a book lover, isn?t it? In Malaysia, going totally paperless is unlikely now, as black-and-whites are still required in formal settings like high courts and real estate purchase sector, and not everyone owns a smartphone here. But we are slowly and surely on our way. All stakeholders in this nation must communicate with each other and be involved at a personal level, on a daily basis. In the aspect of going paperless, there are definitely more issues to consider, such as confidentiality, transaction cybersecurity and the exploitation of our personal info to form big data by global corporates. As a future optimist, although with a sceptical attitude towards digital privacy matters, I believe that the world is gradually getting digitalized in every corner. Inevitably, we must consider the more pressing crises ahead: climate change, deforestation and global warming. Forests are our home and our haven. We have to keep our tress thriving in forests to maintain the delicate equilibrium of our ecosystem and biodiversity. After all, we must always, always save for many more rainy days. http://wwf.panda.org/about_our_earth/deforestation/importance_forests/ https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-do-you-make-paper-from-a-tree http://www.thanam.com.my/paper/ https://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnists/2017/10/287461/paperless-way-forward http://www.crcbox.org/recycling_movement.php https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/features/2010/04/06/going-paperless/ https://leaderonomics.com/business/going-paperless-whats-the-hype https://www.statista.com/statistics/494587/smartphone-users-in-malaysia/ http://www.thanam.com.my/paper/ https://wonderopolis.org/wonder/how-do-you-make-paper-from-a-tree http://www.netsgroup.com.my/our-business/ |
