Sustainability Journal
Sustainability Journal Issue 4 (update 3rd January 2010)
Owing to the difficulty in covering printing costs, publication of Sustainabilityjournal #4 has been postponed. Unfortunately, Sustainability #3 incurred a significant financial loss. Effectively, this means the journal has had to be rescued using income from other work carried out by the Institute. Hopefully all remaining debts incurred by the Journal will be cleared by May 2010. We are still chasing money owned to us by retail outlets since June 2008.
Subsidising the journal is this manner is not sustainable as the resources of the Institute are very modest. In order to continue, it is necessary for the journal to at least break even. We hope this situation will be resolved in the next few months.
In the interim, we can of course refund subscribers for outstanding issues. We are also offering copies of the Mayo Energy Audit in lieu of 2 copies of the journal.
A number of articles on food and energy security have already been written for Sustainability #4. These articles may be published on the website in the near future.
In the meantime, a number of articles from Sustainability #3 are now available in digital format:
Selected Articles from Issue 3
Ordering By Post
Sustainability #3 is available by post from the Sustainability Institute, price €7.00 including postage to any address in Ireland or €8.50 (£6.80 stg) to addresses outside of Ireland (worldwide).
Other back issues:
Copies of issues One and Two are still available at €5.00 including postage to any address in Ireland or €6.50 (£5.20 stg) to addresses outside of Ireland.
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Please make cheques payable to The Sustainability Institute
Send to:
Sustainability Insitute
Corrig
Sandyhill
Westport
Co. Mayo
Republic of Ireland
Ordering On Line
Sustainability can be ordered on-line using PayPal. This is a fast, secure and efficient internet payment facility used by millions of people worldwide. Paypal is a free service which works seamlessly with all major credit cards. Click on order online to proceed.
Other ways you can support Sustainability
We use an enormous amount of A4 paper in the Sustainability office, the majority of which is old letterheaded paper which we intercepted on its way to the local 'recycling' facility. We simply cut off the old letterhead.
It may come as surprise to many people that over 90 percent of Ireland's 'recycled' waste is simply sent overseas for someone else to deal with. Even paper and cardboard is exported for 'recycling'.
Many offices and Government departments regularly change their letterheads, with the result that tens or even hundreds of thousands of sheets of old letterheaded paper is then redundant.
Rather than add to the shiploads of stuff Ireland is effectively dumping abroad, why not divert some of it our way? Anonymous donation gratefully accepted. Please note all paper must be of good enough quality to go through a printer.
Environmental Impact of Production
We have received a number of requests for an on-line version of the journal. This makes sense for a number of reasons, particularly from the point of view to making the magazine accessible to a wider audience. However, one thing we have discovered as a result of our own research into the embodied energy of using the internet is that the environmental impact of downloading and reading the entire publication from cover to cover is probably similar to the impact of producing a hard copy! If the hard copy is read by a more than one person, which is generally very likely, then the hard copy may come out ahead as the impact of using computers is proportional to the time spent with them turned on whereas the impact of each hard copy relates to the production and distrubtion processes and is not influenced by the number of readers.
At typical desktop and monitor uses about 200-250 watts of electricity (0.2-0.25 kWh per hour) and given the low efficiency levels of fossil fuel fired power stations the real energy cost - primary fuel - is about 0.52-0.67 kWh of energy per hour of usage. Studies suggest the energy required to manufacture a computer and monitor may be in the region of 2000 kWh, which when divided into the expected number of hours the product is used before being replaced works out at about 0.5-1.0 kWh per hour of usage.
Even disregarding the energy to maintain international telecommunications systems and satellites, which is enormous, if it takes 4-6 hours to read to the journal thoroughly from cover to cover and refer back to the more interesting bits on subsequent occasions, then the total energy footprint of the computer use is of the order of 4-10 kWh. With laptops the footprint will be a bit lower but not significantly so because apparently the production process is more energy intensive.
By comparison, producing one journal in hard copy is estimated to require 3.8-6.6 kWh of energy. The energy required for delivery to shops is very variable as it depends on the mode of delivery (primarily posal service), how many copies are posted per individual consignment and - more importantly - the total copies delivered from the Sustainabilty office to the post office per mail-out.
At the present time we haven't worked out how much energy is required to stock the journal in a retail outlet.
However, the worst energy gobbler of all is likely to be the final phase of distrbution, the collection of the journal from the distribution outlet by the buyer. This could easily double the entire energy footprint of production if a return car journey of 5 km is made in heavy traffic for the sole purpose of picking up the journal from a retail outlet!
Other studies carried out by the Sustainability institute on the embodied energy of the potato have shown that picking up your grocieries by car generally has a worse environmental impact than flying them in from abroad, though there are exceptions. The reason for this is the very small volumes or weights carried on a typical domestic shopping expedition and the low efficiency of the motor car.
To ensure that Sustainability journal has the best possible environmental outcomes, please share your copies with as many people as possible!
