PDA for the environment

By Dilaila Mohd Yunus

A few months back, a leading telco asked me to write an article on their contributions to the environment. I was stumped. Tried as a might, I just couldn’t find a convincing angle for this particular telco.

And in my research, I stumbled upon a myriad of information on the hazards of Personal Digital Assistants (PDA) on the environment. It seems that despite its acronym, PDAs do not display any public affection for the environment at all.

Quite the opposite actually.

PDAs (and any mobile phones, smart or otherwise), use quite a bit of energy, water and mineral resources in its production alone.

Apparently, 17.5 pounds of fossil fuels and 350 pounds of water go into just the microchip portion of a cellphone. That is before you take into account the plastics, chip board, battery, packaging and transportation.

Then consider the energy required to recharge, download, synch, what-have-yous.

Moreover, because manufacturers keep producing these shiny toys at frequent intervals, consumers keep upgrading their toys, unnecessarily so.

Yes, unnecessary. Be honest. How many of you out there actually use your PDA as a planner? You buy something because it looks cool, the screen is amazing and then proceed to use it to call, sms, mms and retrieve your emails or surf. Something that any 3G phone can do, even the older models.

And apart from appointments, to do lists and birthday reminders; what other organising do you use your PDA for?

And what happens to your older phones? Given to friends or relatives, or relegated to a drawer somewhere. Most don’t bother to trade it in because of the depleted value. Some can’t even give it away because at the rate the technology is going, last year’s model is already considered obsolete.

What happens then is your phone may rest in peace in a rubbish bin somewhere, but the environment takes another beating.

After all, how many of you actually recycle your phone or battery, or even know how to go about recycling your phone or battery?

Now, people laugh at me when I whip out my refillable paper planner. *gasp*

But you know what, every year, all I replace is the diary portion. All the other information stays. No unnecessary waste there. And even if I do treat myself to a new one, I still use the old one for storing bits of papers, or create a new use for it.

Besides, there’s great satisfaction in crossing off an item from my to do list as opposed to seeing it disappear from the screen. And I never lose any information because I forgot to synch my planner. Or unable to retrieve information because the battery ran out and there’s no charger in sight.

But I digress.

Okay, so neither PDA nor paper planner are exactly kind to the environment. But I figure paper planner has less impact on the environment. My paper planner does not destroy the entire rainforest, maybe just a small bush.

Makes me feel smug when I think of my less than shiny old phone.

The writer is an international award-winning KL-based creative consultant with more than a decade’s experience in some of Malaysia’s most prominent advertising agencies and now runs In Other Words.