What is Digg?282 Comments
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -114/+236and all of those 6 billion sheets of paper will come from trees grown in tree farms that will be immediately replanted after they are harvested. they are not hurting nature by sending out huge bills that waste paper. they are keeping the paper and tree farm industry going. that provides jobs, and helps the economy keep moving.
you want to shed tears, shed them for the postal workers that have to walk their route carrying around those extra heavy bills. or the dumbasses that wasted 600 bucks on a phone just because of the name. - blubolt, on 10/10/2007, -6/+111or you could go to your account online and uncheck the "send paper bill" option, butt munch. Take some responsibility for your own impact - one of the reasons there is an environmental footprint of that size is because of the service users are demanding. If they didn't send the bill you would whine about that too.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -6/+104My papermill stocks have gone up 215% since the iPhone was released. I bought an iPhone with the profits. .
- krnldmp, on 10/10/2007, -11/+64I expect iphone to be obsolete by 2008.
- MKautz, on 10/10/2007, -33/+79Yes, since we don't use enough paper already, AT&T is definitely helping the economy and paper industry. /sarcasm
I don't think your realize how shallow you come off making a comment like that. - dylanrush, on 10/10/2007, -19/+62Even if that paper did come from a tree farm, a permanent forest had to be destroyed to build that farm there. Tree farms are not suitable habitats for anything.
WASTING PAPER = BAD FOR THE ENVIRONMENT - avenu420, on 10/10/2007, -3/+35can we say the same for phone books?
- bugmenot47, on 10/10/2007, -5/+35recycle?
- asaturn, on 10/10/2007, -4/+33uh... so why don't they just encourage paperless billing? $10 off if you pay your bill online ... from your shiny new iPhone.
- thax, on 10/10/2007, -4/+28Making white paper uses many nasty chemicals in the bleaching process. Other processes also use chemicals to produce the paper product. In addition the process to make paper consumes vast amounts of fresh water and power. My town of Prince George in Canada doesn't mind the extra economic boost, but don't pretend that this wasteful process is somehow not hurting nature.
- softboiled, on 10/10/2007, -5/+26if the farms weren't sustainable then they wouldn't be farms. Farms replant after a harvest. Or are you suggesting that in the dead of night lumberjacks are going into backyards and chopping down other people's trees.
- bbq2007, on 10/10/2007, -4/+24Good. Now those trees can't jump in front of celebrities skiing downhill and kill them. SONNY BONO WILL BE AVENGED!!!!!!!!
- qubitz, on 10/10/2007, -1/+20I expect to still be in my contract by 2008.
- acl123, on 10/10/2007, -1/+19It's still a monumental waste.
- vertinox, on 10/10/2007, -1/+16What about all the energy used to create the paper and transport it?
- dieselb73, on 10/10/2007, -5/+20Also to add to whitezombie420 "and all of those 6 billion sheets of paper will come from trees grown in tree farms that will be immediately replanted. . . "
NO TREES are destroyed at all to make paper. What gets made into paper is the leftover crap that you can't make boards out of. I happen to have a client who is a Timber Company with its own tree farm. And "pulp" as its called is the tops or the parts of the tree that have too many defects to make a board out of. - Scheissen, on 10/10/2007, -8/+21wow, you deserve most stupid comment of the day
AT&T needs to revise their contracts. It's not even useful listing every KB downloaded when it's all listed as "data."
Have you ever heard of this thing called the soil that trees grow out of? Usually they use a lot of this "nutrition" in the soil when replanting trees. It's not infinite. - miriclaire, on 10/10/2007, -0/+13WHY aren't the bills sent by email?
- hoovcluck, on 10/10/2007, -3/+16Paper mill? I don't think so buddy. AT&T uses only the finest hard wood trees straight from the rain forests.
- UNL1M1T3D, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12Hmm that explains why I no longer have any trees in my back yard! Damn you AT&T!
- totorototoro, on 10/10/2007, -0/+12Because ATT itemizes not only every phone call you make (like other phone bills), it itemizes every element of every webpage of every site you visit, in terms of byte size, time received, duration, etc. And then, since every iPhone automatically gets unlimited internet service, it says: Charge 0.00.
Seriously. - inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Does anyone actually use the paper phone book any more? Especially when you have the internet to be able to get the same info and not have it be up to a year out of date.
I've not used a phone book for 5-6 years. - Philodox, on 10/10/2007, -24/+35How do you know they all come from sustainable tree farms? Do you work for the paper mill that supplies AT&T's supplier? Or do you have godlike knowledge of the paper industry?
- caliyankee, on 10/10/2007, -0/+11Hell no! Dugg UP for "butt munch". Haven't heard that one in years.
- enivid, on 10/10/2007, -3/+14Why are people digging this (parent) comment up! There is no argument that can convince me that waste is a good thing.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+10Well they should really have that option ticked by default, and if you want a paper bill you should pay an extra couple of dollars for it!
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -2/+11What, a farm with a great big "All these trees are for iPhone bills" sign out the front?
- pascal21, on 10/10/2007, -3/+11seems to me that if the iphone is really as awesome as everyone says, they could just send the bill to be viewed on the phone.
that might be too obvious though - cosmoli, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9Yes, this comment is indeed very shallow. Saying X creates jobs and helps the economy going can be used to defend any form of labor X. Also note that paper production is one of the major (I think about 10% of all industry) users of energy,coming from fossil fuels, etc.
- UNL1M1T3D, on 10/10/2007, -1/+9Each tree is guaranteed to have at least 3oz of Howler Monkey blood on it or your next bill is free.
- Cykaos, on 10/10/2007, -0/+7I gave up both a testicle and an ovary and they still didn't let me out.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -0/+71 tree can only provide enough wood pulp to make 16 rheems of paper (8000 sheets).
This, 6,000,000,000 / 8000 = about 75,000
Why aren't they sending these bills out electronically?? Hell, the large screen non the iPhone would be ideal for this. - breadfred, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8I receive, in good old Great Britain a phone book, a Thompson's (local business directory) and a yellow pages every single year. They all go straight to the recycling bin. When I need a number, I simply find it online. These phone books are a thing of the past for people who are connected to the Internet. It would be great if I could opt out from this paper wastage.
- inactive, on 10/10/2007, -1/+8not everyone gets a 50 page bill, mine was 1.
buried as inaccurate. - mikeyv33, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6everyone gets a phone book, not every one has an iphone
- Buddhaismybuddy, on 10/10/2007, -0/+6yes, this will mean they will need to harvest around 750,000 trees.
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mpapermaking.html
Do you have any idea how much pollution that will create, logging trucks, chainsaws, papermills. the whole process is extremely damaging to the environment - bstew22, on 10/10/2007, -2/+750 pages? wtf. who would read that? i don't even read my current 3-4 page bill.
- meadot01, on 10/10/2007, -3/+81 - What does this have to do with iphone or AT&T - I know Verizon also puts SMS and data detail into bill.
2 - It doesn't really figure in online billing. If people don't want to waste the paper they should get the bill online. - pizpot, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6Those tree farms are called FORESTS here in Canada. I tree planted in BC, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. The loggers break every rule they can, divide the ecosystem up with gravel roads and change the heck out of the forest. It recovers, but the big animals don't. Never mind that I buried about 1/3 of what I got paid to have planted in little pits when my boss wasn't looking.
- kedohmen, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Wait wait wait, Postal workers still walk where you're from? The lazy bastards around here all drive
- civdis24, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6You're a complete joke. Regardless of where the paper came from, WTF is the point of a 50 page bill? No one will read through that *****. It's not only a waste of paper, it's a waste of time and life.
Amazing that somehow my Sprint bill manages to be contained on about 3 small sheets of paper. What's the point of a phone bill any longer than 5 pages? - dieselb73, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5Trust me the trees my client grows are worth far to much to be sent straight to the paper mill, the only wood that goes to the chiper is the left over crap. Also the saw mill has whats called a chip and saw, i.e. as the log enters the saw the round edges are chipped off for paper, and the meat of the log is then turned into boards. The costs of growing and moving trees is way to high to make paper. In fact there are times when not enough paper is being made that all this extra wood sits and rots or is turned into firewood. so I wouldn't spout off aobut things you don't know about (probably live in a conrete canyon and don't even know what a tree looks like).
- fadetoone, on 10/10/2007, -0/+5I was going to make the same comment. I haven't gotten a paper bill from AT&T/Cingular in years. Since the iphone type people would seem to be more likely to be internet friendly, it would be the obvious choice...
- bstew22, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6no we can't
- nlevend, on 10/10/2007, -4/+9Can somebody explain why the bills are so long to begin with?
- motivr, on 10/10/2007, -1/+6One of the bad impressions I had when I came to the U.S. was that people waste a lot of resources.Indoor was cold because of too much air conditioning.and things like wasting paper and packaging materials. Also U.S. recycling system is poor when compared to that of Korea. In South Korea, you have to use government regulated trash bag (very expensive plastic bag of course). And the recycling system is a lot more realistic.
- elnerdo, on 10/10/2007, -2/+6Which when you think about it, is only a grid of ~87x87 trees, and even if we're really liberal with our numbers, that can't be much more than a 2000foot by 2000 foot plot of land, which is really only a little over 90 acres of trees, and I'm being really gratuitous with my numbers here.
After it's all said and done: It's really not that big of a deal. - gomezfreak, on 10/10/2007, -1/+5For a device so "advanced", the billing method is primitive to say the least. This doesn't help the whole whole wanting to be seen as "green" image does it Apple?
- Buddhaismybuddy, on 10/10/2007, -7/+11LOL, you really think taht all that paper comes from a farm? what a joke, you know how many trees it takes to make 6 billion sheets of paper?
"and all of those 6 billion sheets of paper will come from trees grown in tree farms that will be immediately replanted after they are harvested."
Oh really, thats why the logging industry no longer exists, and they arnt continuosly cutting down rainforests all ove the world....right.........right?
Please, stop being an ignorant tool. - UNL1M1T3D, on 10/10/2007, -0/+4I am more concerned on why the hell they need 50 freaking pages. My Verizon bill is 4 pages (front and back mind you) and that is with four people on the plan.
-
Show 51 - 100 of 267 discussions
Digg is coming to a city (and computer) near you! Check out all the details on our 
© Digg Inc. 2009
— Content created and posted by Digg users is