Employees at The P.A. Hutchison Company are book people. You may be asking, “Well, what is that?” Book people keep the nature of the Romanticism Age alive in modern day events. Imagination, creativity, appreciating nature, these are all ideas our employees value. Literature and books were huge in the Romantic Era. In the late 18th century, “The Romantics overthrew the philosophical, artistic–even geographical–limitations of the Enlightenment [Age of Reason].”[1] Can we compare today’s culture to an altered Age of Reason? Let’s see.
Lately, book lovers (romantics) have faced a lot of criticism. Most of this commentary comes from e-book lovers (reasoners). “Why buy printed books when the digital version is available? Why not just buy an e-book?” We are faced with these questions every day. For P.A. Hutchison workers, the answers come easy.
Consider us old fashioned, but we appreciate the feeling of a book. The unique fragrance of history and stories that are aromatic to books, the crinkling sound when you turn a page, the warmness of a novel in your hands, the intricate beauty of different font styles and book covers; to us, none of that can be replaced or exchanged for another reading medium such as digital tablets.
Digital lovers try saying that book manufacturing hurts the environment and people need to use more technological devices. This is easily refuted with so many articles that inform readers how much electricity and waste date centers cause. A year-long investigation by The New York Times found that in 2010, “data centers used about 76 billion kilowatt-hours in 2010, or roughly 2 percent of all electricity used in the country that year… But the paper industry, which some predicted would be replaced by the computer age, consumed 67 billion kilowatt-hours from the grid in 2010.”[2] Data centers used 9 billion more kilowatt-hours than the paper industry. This article was published on September 23, 2012.
Also, did you know that just 11% of the world’s forests are used for paper? (28% for lumber, 53% for fuel)[3] Environmental issues and complaints should not be targeted to the industry that uses trees the least.
In fact, e-book readers, “chances are that the electricity flowing through your digital media devices and their servers is linked to mountaintop-removal coal from the Appalachian Mountains. The Southern Appalachian forest region of the U.S. is responsible for 23% of all coal production in the United States and 57% of the electricity generated in the U.S. comes from coal — including the rapidly growing power consumed by many U.S. data centers, networks, and consumer electronic devices.”[4] This is not very green; data centers cause more damage to the environment and degrade forests in an irresponsible, unhealthy manner.
Discoveries on how destructive data centers are to the earth are being uncovered every day by journalists and environmentalists. The printing industry will never cease in existence, and with advances in safe forest management, printing is staying strong. Use The P.A. Hutchison Company. Buy print, use paper products such as SFI & FSC from safe forests, and you have nothing to worry about.
So why should us romantic book lovers conform to “reason” and buy e-readers? We do not see a reason to. It is too environmentally unhealthy! Stay true to nature and traditional print books.
The P.A. Hutchison Company 