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Alma media ordered a research study from VTT and Centre for Sustainable Communications (CESC) at KTH, in order to evaluate the environmental performance of specific Alma Media products. The report covers the results of the life cycle assessments for printed newspapers; Aamulehti, Iltalehti and Kauppalehti as well as online newspapers; Aamulehti.fi, Iltalehti.fi and Kauppalehti.fi. With the help of a life cycle assessment the potential environmental impacts related to a defined product life cycle is evaluated, taking into account raw material acquisition, production, use, and endof-life treatment. Thus, various kinds of environmental impacts were considered.The results indicate that the environmental performance of printed and online versions of Alma Media’s newspapers includes different types of environmental impacts, and that these are distributed differently in the value chain and geographically. The majority of the impacts of printed newspapers occur from paper and printing manufacturing, which are located in Finland. On the other hand, environmental impacts related to online newspapers are to a large extent dependent on the manufacturing of electronic devices used for reading the online content. These impacts occur in other countries and at the suppliers not directly related to Alma Media. With few readers of the online versions the content production may also be a considerable part of the overall potential environmental impact. The actions to take towards improvements will need to be different related to the value chain. Furthermore, Alma Media as a media company can have a key role in sharing environmental information in order to improve user practices and stakeholder practices along the value chain. The study covered a number of environmental impacts, which was important because the environmental impacts for online and printed newspapers were clearly different. The study also pointed out the importance in being careful when assessing impact categories where there may be substantial data gaps and where there are greater uncertainties related to the assessment of impacts, e.g. toxicity impact categories. Comparisons between print and online versions are not simple, as print and online versions provide different types of information and the readers use them in different ways. Furthermore, the printed and online newspapers from Alma Media may not replace each other, but rather complement each other which can mean adding up environmental impacts from printed and online versions. The functional unit chosen is very decisive regarding the environmental performance of printed and online media, if they are to be related to each other. Using different kinds of perspectives through functional units gives more information and increased knowledge. QC 20130710 |
