April is the month of Earth Day, which is celebrated on the 22nd. This has been an official "day" since 1970. Yes, THAT long! This is a day that has been dedicated to bring awareness to the importance of being nice to the Earth. If you are a digital scrapbooker, you are probably environmentally friendly. If scrapbooking is something you would like to get into, consider doing it digitally. Let's see how this format is helpful to the Earth.
Less paper
When manufacturing papers for traditional scrapbooking, there is an obvious use of tree as a source for the material. More papers created, more trees are cut. And how much paper is a traditional scrapbooker stocking? All those "cute papers" that someone falls in love with and purchases to use later. How many papers would a typical traditional scrapbooker have in their stash? Dozens? Hundreds? Maybe more? Digital scrapbooking does not rely on paper or paper products to create layouts. It relies only on pixels stored in the computer.
Of course, digital scrapbookers will often choose to print their pages, individually or in a complete album. That is still fewer pages than traditional scrapbookers.
Less waste
Although paper scrapbookers will often try to reuse leftover pieces of paper or stickers, some pieces will be too small to be used again, or in a shape that is unusable, so those are wasted. The same goes with leftover pieces of ribbons, mats, and tiny shapes that might be punched out. As much as you want, it is almost impossible to use EVERY little piece of paper, ribbon, etc.
In addition to less waste in paper format, mistakes are easy to undo. You don't "waste" a printed photo or paper because you cut it too small or the wrong size.
As a digital scrapbooker, there is no waste since anything that is cut is still left in a digital format, and pixels can't fill a waste paper basket!
Fewer trips to the store
Working on a project, you might be missing a blue ribbon, or a particular red patterned paper, or more white buttons. In order to complete your project, or even to plan your next one, this might mean another trip to the store. Of course, with online shopping, you might be making your purchases online and wait for the delivery, however, those supplies will be moved using some kind of transportation, even if it is send through mail.
Using digital scrapbooking, you can do all your shopping online and the delivery is completely digital too. No fuel will be used. In addition, you might not even need to make another purchase if you need an additional blue ribbon since you can just copy and paste it from your own stash!
Sharing without shipping
If you want to share your scrapbook album with someone else, or create another album for grandma, traditional scrapbookers have to use double (or triple) the supplies, which adds to the paper use, the potential waste and the shipping that extra album. On the other hand, a digital scrapbook album can be simply emailed so grandma can see it, or it can be posted in a gallery online for everyone in the family to enjoy.
Of course, traditional paper scrapbookers can also be environmentally friendly in reusing supplies, using what they have instead of buying new supplies, or limiting their product purchases. But if you are scrapbooking digitally, it is just easier to be environmentally friendly.
2 thoughts on “Digital Scrapbooking; Environmental Friendly”
I agree Sheila, plus in the last couple of years I have spent a lot of weeks traveling in my caravan and it is sooo much easier to take a laptop with ALL my supplies on it than to have to decide in advance what to take.
Another bonus which is important to me and probably others that don’t have a designated craft room is there is no clearing up after every session of cutting and sticking etc, no sweeping up of tidy bits or having to put all your equipment used away into storage when done. If you are like me and leave it all out till your project is done, digi scrap booking means you can have a relatively tidy dining table.