You've heard of paper airplanes. How about paperless airplanes?
The New York Times today reports that airlines are exploring ways to reduce the amount of paper each plane carries as a way to reduce weight and fuel costs. The article implies that each pound of additional weight costs $17,600 (=$440,000/25 lbs) in added fuel costs over the course of a year, which I’m convinced is an overestimate. The statistic I recall from my work on Winning the Oil Endgame is each pound of additional weight costs 100 to 150 gallons of jet fuel each year for each aircraft, which is still enough to justify switching to electronic documents, but far less than what the article implies (even at $4/gallon of fuel!).
This is another nice example of how information technology allows us to substitute bits for atoms, thus allowing for substantial environmental improvements while also reducing the costs of goods and services. For more discussion of this and related issues, go here.
