It’s annual lawyer license renewal time, the time of year when lawyers again render to Caesar his annual bar dues. And increasingly, state bars like Arizona’s and Nevada’s want their members to pay their pound of flesh — if not painlessly, at least paperlessly.
Save the trees.
In July 2011, the consumer protection agency better known as the Arizona State Bar announced a Task Force on Sustainability “to equip the State Bar of Arizona (“SBA”) and its members with the knowledge and tools to promote conservation and protection of natural resources.” If what’s past is prologue, the Task Force was undoubtedly composed of a mini-production of acolytes since the Bar favors management-by-committee. Some 500-plus days after its given marching orders, the Task Force will this month issue its assessment, evaluation, and recommendations. But truth be known, there won’t be any surprises. As most of us know, the Bar’s move to environmental enlightenment has been long overdue.
Profligate printing.
Indeed, for the better of a decade, the Arizona Bar has been profligate in its contribution to paper production deforestation with an onslaught of printed materials redundantly sent to its members.
Why send something electronically when the belt-and-suspenders Bar will also send the same missive by bulk mail?
More than 10 years ago, I wrote the Bar to complain about a glossy four-color brochure about some self-laudatory initiative it had just launched. I objected because I happened to know that splashy four-color printing on heavy glossy stock is expensive. Hardly surprising, I never got a reply.
Not just yet.
“Make me chaste, but not yet.”
So now with its usual back-slapping self-promotion, the Bar is “Going green” – at least, as far as annual dues payments and annual conventions are concerned.
But to paraphrase Saint Augustine, the Arizona Bar is also saying, “Lord, make me eco-friendly, but not just yet” since like past years, I again received my annual door stop — the bar’s printed Membership Directory.
The latest Annual Report says the 625-page Membership Directory costs members $65,541 or $3.76 each. And unlike the Bar’s slick monthly house organ, Arizona Attorney magazine, which returns revenue or the Bar’s CLE Department, which generated $733,208 in revenue in 2011, the Membership Directory is an annual money-loser.
Lawyers still clinging to their . . . .
Leave it to lawyers, the last bastion of antediluvian thinking. In a smart phone, tablet and social media age, even the phone companies have started hanging up on White Pages. But not lawyers. They’re still clinging to print directory listings, advertising and phone books.
Where long ago, most of us reached the point of finding other uses for phone books from cat boxes to rabbit bedding to compost and even for when nature calls – bathroom emergencies, last time I checked, lawyers were still advertising in yellow page directories and staunchly leading the rear-guard action protecting phone books’ continued environmentally unfriendly existence. While you can’t opt-out of bar directories and save yourself $3.76, you can fortunately opt out of those wasteful directories at sites like YellowPagesGoesGreen.org.
Need a lawyer’s contact information? Go online. That’s what most of us do. And following suit, the Minnesota Bar gave its printed Bench and Bar Directory the heave-ho in 2009.
And the Oregon State Bar similarly went sustainable to save “4.6 million sheets of paper,” including ending the practice of printing an annual Membership Directory.
And two years after a survey revealed 40% of its members didn’t use its print directory, the Wisconsin Bar “decided to discontinue distribution of the print directory to all members.”
Maybe, one of these years, the Arizona Bar will belatedly follow the same pattern and go green for real.
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Photo Credits: “The Oath of the Horatii,” by Jacques-Louis David at Wikipedia Commons, public domain; “Eco Friendly Product,” by Vectorportal at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution; “10.22.12,” bycolemama at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content for noncommercial use requiring attribution and share alike distribution; Saint_Augustine_of_Hippo.jpg t Wikipedia Commons, Source: The Bettman Archive, public domain; “Phone Books,” by Aaron Parecki, aaronparecki, at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution;”Phone Book Tunnel,” by coalybunny at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensing requiring attribution;”Phone Book Waste,” by monkeyatlarge at Flickr via Creative Commons-licensed content requiring attribution;
There are four primary issues related to us of paper: (1) Sustainable yield of trees producing pulp. (2) Use of chemicals in the production of paper (acids, PCBs, etc.). (3) Landfill space for disposal of phone books, newspapers, etc., and (4) Interaction with the global warming issue.
(1) There is no real crisis with trees grown for paper pulp. Most paper pulp is supplied from white and yellow pines and cottonwoods that are planted in dense stands and mature to harvest in five to ten years. We are not talking about redwoods here. They are a crop just like corn and wheat.
(2) Regulation of paper mills is no more difficult than for other industrial processes, such as refining gasoline or production of electronic devices that replace a lot of paper.
(3) There is no shortage of landfill capacity in the US, especially in western states like Arizona. While discarded paper makes up a lot of the volume in landfills, there are many centuries worth of landfull capacity.
(4) How does use of paper interact with global warming? Growing paper pulp trees are made up entirely of carbon compounds in which the carbon is taken solely from CO2 in the air. They are massively efficient greenhouse gas collectors, self-powered. An ideal CO2 removal system would take the CO2 out of the air, be usable in some way that would pay for the costs of the collection system, and then place the carbon into the ground where it would stay out of the atmosphere. The paper production cycle meets those criteria! The use of paper pays for the growth of CO2-scrubbing trees, and the carbon-contaiining material is then either put on a shelf, or buried in a landfill, where it will not deterioate and return to the atmosphere for decades. That is called “carbon sequestration”. Growing trees for paper is actively REDUCING CO2 in the air, putting it way ahead of wind farms and solar energy, which cannot directly attack the CO2 that is emitted by China and by cars.
The conclulsion” There is NO “Paper” cycle problem, and the REAL problem of CO2 production is being actively solved by the production, use and disposal in landfills of paper. We should be looking for ways to INCREASE use of pulp trees, such as in building components and furniture and clothing. If we were able to use it for fuel to power vehicles, it would be recycling CO2 that would be recaptured in the next tree crop.