The Economic Cost and Environmental Effects of Paper Consumption and Computers Usage

Abstract

The study aims at investigating the environmental and economic effects of paper consumption and computer usage in the Banking sector in Palestine. The research mainly depends on the descriptive and quantitative method. In addition, it collects the data annually and it covers the period from 2016 to 2018. The study has found out that the total cost of using paper in the banks in Palestine is about 3.24 million dollars because they consume about 658.4 tons of paper. Looking at paper production process, this amount of paper needs about 16 thousand pine trees, 25 million btus of energy, and 13.5 million gallons. Looking at the total costs of using computers in the banks in Palestine, it costs about 7.6 million dollars and about 122 tons of different minerals and materials which are required to manufacture computers in the banks in Palestine. In addition, it needs about 1.52 GW per year to operate all computers. Hence, this causes the release of greenhouse gases which is equivalent to the consumption of 2495 barrels of oil.

The effectiveness of a green default nudge in achieving resource conservation

“…For the environmental benefits, I followed the environmental statistics from the Standard Chartered report in 2010, which have been used in studies examining paper usage at offices or universities (Abdel Jawad et al 2020;Shah et al 2019;Standard Chartered Bank 2010). The report includes environmental measures for 1 ton of A4 paper (400 reams).…”