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Comment by beebeepka | Hacker News Reader

I love the idea of wasting trees because you just prefer to write things down on paper.

Been in the workforce for decades and I've met more than a handful of people who love writing things down and, of course, drawing stuff.

I've had a guy justify not taking notes because he didn't have a pen and paper on hand...WHILE having an online meeting. On a computer.

Now, these people don't have much in common but they tend to advertise this behaviour as benefitial to me and we always end up resenting each other.

In my experience, the same people often fill the white boards with incomprehensible junk. Again, for my benefit...

Edit:downvotes are not surprising. Waste is good, people. Waste is good.

Anyway, didn't have much sleep last night, so I am a bit cranky

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You seem to have strong negative feelings about this.

But I very much struggle to take reasonable notes on a computer. Something feels “limiting” in a way, even if I’m consciously aware that you can reasonably do everything on a laptop that I would use paper for, and there are benefits like search-ability.

For writing notes I feel flexibility and freedom to redirect my future attention to different parts of the text or accentuate different sections with emphasis or tag a task to be done (with a diamond, in my case).

It’s also the case that if I need to break out into a logical diagram I can easily do so.

There’s something to be said for how it’s viewed by others too… writing notes looks focused. Tapping into a laptop looks distracted.

It is limiting. Doing a diagram on a computer is tedious, and even math notation is slow.

Any use of resources has an ecological impact that needs to be weighed against the benefits.

Same with driving a car, eating meat, buying a new shirt instead of second hand, buying new furniture instead of second hand, flying, buying disposable diapers for your kid instead of textile diapers, etc.

There’s nothing special with paper in this regard.

You are right. Also please note that I do not drive a car, nor do I consume meat. Also, I take great lengths to avoid single use items or use them multiple times.

None of it makes me a better/conscious person but I felt it was necessary to address some of your points

I applaud you for this!

Still using an "ancient" pocket filofax (the one with 4 rings), I don't even buy paper for the notes anymore: it's easy to find discarded one-side printed on A4 brochures/presentations etc, I cut them to size via a guillotine cutter and bob's your uncle, its just for notes etc then once filled: shredded and off to the compost

Depends. If you throw the paper away then sure, it's waste.

But... if you keep it then suddenly you're doing carbon capture. Saving the environment one bad meeting at a time. Or riveting collections of todo-done.

But yeah the idiots who use the "I don't have paper therefore can't take notes." They're the worst.

There's no way, currently, for digital to compete with the precision and tactile feel of paper. One day we may get there, we are advancing remarkably quickly (pun intended).

I think it's certainly remarkable too.

As a consumer, the trees are already wasted. Nothing you can do will change that fact.

Just out of curiosity, do you use toilet paper?

Or do you use a bidet? or do use textile napkins that you wash regularly?

I take a shower immediately after a dump

Have you done the math on this?

My gut says this seems, worse somehow.

Using a 9 l/min shower head for a 6 minute shower results in 54 litres of water being consumed. 54 litres heated from ambient (say; 15 deg C) to shower temperature (say; 40 deg C) requires 1.6 kWh of energy.

Most toilet paper is recycled so it’s a matter of figuring out how much the recycle process consumes per roll, then dividing it by the amount of average toilet paper segments a person uses.

EDIT: Lloyd Alter of the website treehugger.com reports that making a single roll of toilet paper requires 37 gallons of water, 1.3 kilowatt/hours (KWh) of electricity and some 1.5 pounds of wood.

So a whole roll is less than a shower, but I guess it also depends how the energy is being generated; because there are indications that toilet rolls are not entirely recycled, most use some amount of virgin wood.

Anyway, my point is not "you're wrong", my point is that it's a lot more nuanced than people think, and often the "green" solution can be less green but make them feel better.

I simply answered the question. I have zero doubt taking a bath is worse than using sane amounts of TP

A bidet uses far less water than a shower.

Look, quite a lot of new timber is used to produce toilet paper. But OP was complaining about people cutting trees to take notes. Seems reasonable to ask if they also have a problem with toilet paper, which probably will use more wood pulp over the life time than their notebooks ever will.

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