bibliostructures

Weighing up alternatives to paper can be dizzying. One of the reasons to move some publications (directories, newspapers, etc.) that update frequently and have a short life to an electronic format is that it saves trees. Recently, after reading a report about the amount of power that Google uses, and in Michael Pollan’s Omnivore’s Dilemma that it takes more energy to produce corn than it provides in calories of energy, I began to think that a set of paper foraging tools would need to include a snappy algorithm that calculates and compares the paper to electronic ratios for power and water and biodegradability and upcyclability, and then, more subtly, how design decisions affect the use of power and water.

Treehugger reports that if Google’s home page was displayed on a black background rather than white, it would represent a significant saving of power.

From the lights out department – did you know that a cathode ray tube (CRT) monitor uses about 74 watts to display an all white web page, but only uses 59 watts to display an all black page? Yes, there all still plenty of these still in use, particularly in China and Latin America. Worldwide, about 25 percent of the monitors currently in use are cathode ray tubes, which means that they waste energy displaying white backgrounds. This can add up for sites with a global audience.

The story links to a post on a design blog, ecoIron , that has a table showing a panel of the most energy efficient display colours.