By Sid Perkins
The environmental impacts of getting a newspaper dropped on your doorstep each morning vastly outweigh those of receiving the same information via a handheld electronic device such as a personal digital assistant (PDA), according to an analysis in the June 1 Environmental Science & Technology.
To compare the modes of news delivery, Arpad Horvath and Michael W. Toffel of the University of California, Berkeley scrutinized the full range of industrial processes needed to supply a Berkeley resident with the New York Times for a year. That newspaper—with nearly 1.2 million weekday subscribers and 1.7 million on Sundays—has the largest 7-day circulation of any U.S. paper and is available via PDAs over wireless networks, says Horvath.