Environmental impact of printed and electronic teaching aids, a screening study focusing on fossil carbon dioxide emissions

This study was initiated in order to clarify the environmental impact of different kinds of teaching aids easily available today. The aim of the study is to give a screening comparison of the environmental impact when it comes to the global warming potential of printed versus electronic teaching aids. A life cycle perspective is used in the study which means that the different specific life cycle steps of the media products are analysed. In the study, the environmental impact is limited to the impact category global warming. The study focuses on the emissions of fossil carbon dioxide which is the only climate gas included in the analysis. The study shows that the impact on global warming of a web based electronic teaching aid is approximately 10 times higher than the environmental impact of a printed textbook, if a low energy computer equipment scenario is used. If a high energy computer equipment scenario is used, the impact is nearly 30 times higher for the web based electronic teaching aid compared with the impact of the printed textbook. A reason for this is that a textbook can be used for a long time by many users.