There is a lot of talk all over the world about creating a paperless society but it has not come to fruition yet. However, it is no longer the stuff of science fiction and today’s society can indeed go paperless with available technology. I can cite one recent example, from my own experience.
Just last month, I travelled halfway around the world without using a single piece of paper. I downloaded all my tickets and boarding passes to airline and other travel apps on my smartphone and let gate agents and security scanning agents scan the relevant QR codes.
Electronic version
It generally took less than 10 seconds each time and I was on my way without any hassle. Just once, a check-in counter issued paper boarding passes even though I already had the electronic version. This, in my opinion, is a waste of paper and may be a few trees as I saw him handing out paper boarding passes to everyone.
This comes with one caveat though. You have to ensure that your smartphone battery has enough power to make it all work. But with inexpensive power banks and plenty of charging points available in places such as airports, it is generally your fault if you cannot charge your phone.
During my travels, I got a glimpse of what a paperless world could look like. I travelled by bus and train without getting a single paper ticket – I just tapped the electronic, preloaded transit card in and out of buses and stations. Just multiply that by just 100,000 and guess how much paper can be saved. You can even avoid the plastic card if you pair it with your smartphone via NFC and use the phone as the transit card.
I went to restaurants with my friends and the servers took orders on a tablet and we paid using bank cards. (There are many shops and restaurants that do not accept cash, but that is a topic for another day). Most stores and shops also send the receipts via email or text to customers’ phones, which is increasingly being practised in Sri Lanka too. This too can save a huge amount of paper. I used email for correspondence without printing a single one. If the need arose, there was always a copy on my smartphone.
In many of the countries I have visited, paper-based examinations are passé. Instead, Computer-Based Testing (CBT) is the norm. Instead, the entire test is delivered by computer. Indeed, students can even take some tests from the comfort of their home. Here in Sri Lanka, if you sit for a test such as TOEFL or IELTS, you have the option of taking either test on a computer.
This saves tons of paper (and trees) and prevents examination fraud such as prior leaks of questions or even entire test papers, which have become rather common in Sri Lanka. Since the examination is delivered “live” via computer to all test takers at the same time, there is hardly any room for prior leaks. Even the invigilators and supervisors have no access to the examination papers prior to the start. Sri Lanka should start this process from the universities.
With the general election around the corner in Sri Lanka as well as the US Presidential election to be held this week, attention has been drawn to the importance of electronic voting. While electronic voting does not eliminate the use of paper per se (the voter still has to mark a ballot paper in most instances after which it is fed to the voting machine), it does reduce paper consumption and the time taken to manually count the votes. In the not-too-distant future, it might even be possible to vote from home electronically without going to a physical visiting booth.
Polling station
This will especially benefit the infirm and differently-abled persons who find it rather difficult to visit a polling station, which could be several kilometres away. It will also enable the Diaspora of any given country to vote from their host countries without spending much money to come to the home country.
Electronic voting also reduces the possibility of voter fraud. When Fox News alleged, without even a shred of evidence, that the Dominion Systems electronic voting machines had been rigged in favour of Joe Biden at the 2020 US Presidential election, the latter filed a lawsuit against Fox. When it became clear that Fox would lose the case badly, it agreed on a settlement of US$ 787 million with Dominion. Since then, Fox and other Conservative news outlets have been careful in their reporting on voting machines. The truth is that voting machines cannot be rigged or manipulated to favour one candidate over the other – something human staff can sometimes do.
But the biggest debate concerning a paperless world centres around books, magazines and newspapers. When US e-commerce giant Amazon introduced its first Kindle e-reader in 2007, it marked a turning point in the publishing industry. Here was a device that fitted in the palm of your hand and could download and store thousands of books. Later versions could even read the book for you. The latest versions have a light for reading in total darkness and are waterproof. A so-called dead-tree book can do none of these.
Today, one can instantly download any book to a Kindle, Kobo, iPad or similar device. There really is no need to lug around five or six books when you go on vacation. Heavy textbooks are also a thing of the past with e-readers and tablets.
But this does not mean that the paper book publishing industry is about to die. It is also flourishing, thanks to the Forest Stewardship Council’s (FSC) efforts to encourage publishers and printers to use recycled paper. If you wish to buy a paper book (hardcover or paperback), look for the SFC logo on an inside page. If it is not there, it means that the book has used virgin pulp paper harvested from newly felled trees. That is your cue to give a wide berth to the book, however appealing it may be.
Newspapers and magazines have had a rather different trajectory, as they migrated to the Web much earlier. For example, this newspaper has been on the Web since 1994. But it is the advent of the tablet and the smartphone that sounded the death knell for many print magazines and newspapers. This newspaper too took to the e-paper model in a big way during the Covid period and many readers preferred that medium even after printing resumed.
Moreover, the e-paper enabled the newspapers to offer global subscriptions, which has become a lucrative income generator for them. Recently, when the Washington Post declined to endorse Democratic Presidential Nominee Kamala Harris based on a decision probably taken by its billionaire owner Jeff Bezos of Amazon fame, around 250,000 people in the US alone cancelled their digital subscriptions. This gives us an idea of the scale of the e-paper business.
Good news
The downside is that some newspapers and magazines, from Newsweek to Readers Digest, have gone entirely online, abandoning their print editions. Many newspapers have downsized from broadsheet to tabloid and stopped publishing print editions on certain days.
While this is indeed good news from the perspective of saving paper, as a traditional print journalist this sounds like death by a thousand cuts. The world could indeed be a sad place if printed newspapers literally go out of circulation.
That was a long digression, but a necessary one. But reducing the use of paper alone won’t suffice. We must also aim to reduce paperwork – the mundane task of filling paper forms etc. Some countries have passed legislation to this effect – in the US, this is called the Paperwork Reduction Act (PRA). In Sri Lanka too, the e-Government initiative, going on at a snail’s pace, aims to do just that. We have managed to get there halfway – for example, the passport photograph taken at a studio is directly transmitted to the Controller of Immigration and Emigration. Yet, one still has to fill the form manually and produce the birth certificate physically even if getting the 10th passport. The entire process can easily be moved online and according to reports, the news administration has already laid the groundwork for that.
This will not be an easy transition at first as we are accustomed to a lot of paperwork – even the US transitioned to an entirely online passport issuance system only last month, with the paperwork option still available for those who prefer it. Likewise, almost every Government service can be made available online, which could save a huge quantum of funds. It is not just paper – imagine the savings in terms of printers, photocopiers, toners, scanners and other equipment needed for a paper-based office.
As we learned from the fuel crisis of 2022, this is a world in which everything can be pruned down to a QR code, with a nary of a piece of paper in sight. Let’s do the Earth a favour and save our trees by going paperless in every sphere of life.
