Comments on: Use A Flash Drive; Save A Tree; Ignite A Flash Drive War

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 18:23:02 +0000

I agree with Jen:
1) Most people already have these things
2) Most people never look at tradeshow materials a second time anyway
3) If they’re really serious about taking away materials, they can always ask for it to be emailed, or use their existing USB drive …
So maybe the answer is to promote people to share materials electronically in general, and in the event people don’t have USB drives, then provide ‘em.

By: JenBoynton

JenBoynton — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 23:17:24 +0000

right, it can be used, but will it? Many are likely to end up sitting in desk drawers until the point at which they go the way of records, 8-tracks, floppy disks and 3.5 disks and become obsolete. They will be thrown away or at best recycled.
A lot more energy gets used, and carbon expended, in the course of making a flash drive than 50 sheets of paper. Not to mention all the hard metals and toxics that go into the flash drives. They are extremely difficult for the average user to safely recycle, and if they aren’t recycled, they will be landfilled and the hard metals will leak out of them and eventually make their way into the water table.
This is not to say that I’m against flash drives, of course not. There’s one on my key chain. I’m just far from convinced that they are environmentally preferable to paper in the uses that you’re suggesting.

By: john simonetta

john simonetta — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 12:09:32 +0000

Jen,
So far we have seen the opposite. Companies ask for larger memory drives because they can get more information on them then they could ever afford to print and ship.
Also keep in mind that if the information on a drive goes out of date the drive can still be used for other information by the end user. A drive give at a trade show ends up being used for your daughters MP3s.
You just can’t do that with CD, DVD, or printed materials.

By: JenBoynton

JenBoynton — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 11:45:07 +0000

Hey John,
Do you have any info on life cycle impact for flash drives as compared to the paper document you would otherwise print out?
I suspect that paper still comes out with a lesser impact than flash drives. If you assume that the drive will only be used once or twice,(which is likely given that companies will probably buy drives with small memory to save money, and many people already have flash drives), the impact of paper printing has to be far less than the impact of creating a drive with all those components and toxic chemicals. Especially if you print on 100% post consumer!
I’d be cautious about claiming that flash drives are the better environmental solution just because they *can* be reused.
Cheers,
Jen