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Life Cycle Assessment of a Magazine, Part I: Tablet Edition in Emerging and Mature States
Author(s) -
Ahmadi Achachlouei Mohammad,
Moberg Åsa,
Hochschorner Elisabeth
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of industrial ecology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.377
H-Index - 102
eISSN - 1530-9290
pISSN - 1088-1980
DOI - 10.1111/jiec.12227
Subject(s) - life cycle assessment , environmental science , production (economics) , environmental impact assessment , electronic media , reading (process) , business , environmental economics , advertising , ecology , political science , economics , macroeconomics , biology , law
Summary Information and communication technology (ICT) is providing new ways to access media content. ICT has environmental benefits and burdens. The overall goal of the present study was to assess the environmental impacts of production and consumption of magazines read on tablets from a life cycle perspective. Important goals were to identify the activities giving rise to the main impacts and the key factors influencing the overall environmental impacts. Data gaps and uncertainties were also addressed. The results are compared against those for the print edition of the magazine in a separate article (part 2). The methodology used in the study was life cycle assessment. The environmental impacts assessed included climate change, cumulative energy/exergy demand, metal depletion, photochemical oxidant formation, particulate matter formation, terrestrial acidification, freshwater/marine eutrophication, fossil depletion, human toxicity, and ecotoxicity. The results indicate that content production can be the major contributor to environmental impacts if readers are few (as for the emerging version of the magazine studied). Assuming more readers (more mature version) or a larger file size for the tablet magazine, electronic storage and distribution may be the major contributor. Thus, in contrast to previous studies on electronic media, which reported a dominant impact of the use phase, this study found a higher impact for content production (emerging version) and electronic storage and distribution (mature version). However, with inefficient, low overall use of the tablet with a mature version of the tablet magazine, the greatest impact was shown to come from the reading activity (i.e., the use phase). In conclusion, the relative impacts of the tablet magazine would decrease considerably with high numbers of readers, their efficient use of the tablet (i.e., for many purposes over a long life of the device), and a smaller magazine file.