How Much of the Amazon Would it Take to Print the Internet?

George Harwood, Evangeline Walker

Abstract


This paper explores the idea of printing every page of the internet onto a standard A4 piece of paper, and how many trees, in terms of a percentage of the Amazon rainforest, would be required in the process. By making some assumptions about the size of the Internet, and the type of tree available in the Amazon, it is found that 2.1x10-6% would be required in order to print Wikipedia alone, 0.002% to encompass the entire non-explicit internet and 2% including the ‘Dark web’. 


Keywords


Internet; Amazon rainforest

Full Text:

PDF

References


Berners-Lee, T. (03/2014 – last update), A Magna Carter for the web [Homepage of TED Talks], [Online] Available: https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_berners_lee_a_magna_carta_for_the_web#t-70550 [Accessed 20/02/2015].

Butler, R. (2014 – last update), Calculating Deforestation figures for the Amazon [Homepage of Mongabay], [Online] Available: http://rainforests.mongabay.com/amazon/deforestation_calculations.html [Accessed 20/02/2015].

Allianz, (2015 – last update), Climate Change: Ten of the most important forests worldwide [Homepage of Allianz], [Online] Available: http://knowledge.allianz.com/environment/climate_change/?669/ten-most-important-forests-worldwide-gallery [Accessed 20/02/2015].

Wikipedia, (2015 – last update), Size of Wikipedia [Homepage of Wikipedia], [Online] Available: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Size_of_Wikipedia [Accessed 20/02/2015].

WWWS, (2015 – last update), The size of the World wide web, [Online] Available: http://www.worldwidewebsize.com/ [Accessed 20/02/2015].

Processes, P., Trees, H. & Aspen, E., (2008). Trees Used in Papermaking Fact Sheet. , (October), pp.1–3.

Steege, H. (2013) Hyperdominance in the Amazonian Tree Flora, Science, 342, 6156.

Conservatree, (2014 – last update), How much paper can be made from a tree? [Homepage of Conserveatree], [Online] Available: http://conservatree.org/learn/EnviroIssues/TreeStats.shtml [Accessed 20/02/2015].

M. Bergman, White Paper: The Deep Web: Surfacing Hidden Value, http://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/t/text/idx/j/jep/3336451.0007.104/--white-paper-the-deep-web-surfacing-hidden-value?rgn=main;view=fulltext edn. Journal of Electronic Publishing, 2001.


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.
We use both functional and performance cookies to improve visitor experience. Continue browsing if you are happy to accept cookies. Please see our Privacy Policy for more information.
OK