Learning on tablets is better for the environment

The argument

Schoolwork is mainly distributed through the following mediums: worksheets, textbooks, exercise books and tests. Among these we can observe that the majority of these use paper. Around the world, schools have traditionally relied on these materials to teach students in classrooms. Here is an estimation of the scale of paper usage in schools alone: “Let's say that in a school of 100 teachers, each teacher gets a 50-ream allotment. Each ream holds 500 sheets, so per teacher, that would be 25,000 pieces of paper. In a class of 30 students that is 833 pieces of paper per student per year. This would mean at a school of 100 teachers, that school would use 250,000 piece of paper annually.” Paper consumption is very high in the education industry, and printing textbooks take up quite a percentage of that each year. The issue of regularly producing new editions of textbooks (and rendering older ones useless) is also worrying as it then creates paper waste. If we switch to tablets, however, all of these problems would be resolved, as one electronic textbook uses no paper at all.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The arithmetic in the quoted estimate does not work. One hundred teachers each receiving fifty reams of five hundred sheets is twenty-five thousand sheets per teacher and two and a half million sheets for the school, not the two hundred and fifty thousand stated — an order-of-magnitude error inside the argument's only quantitative support. The per-student figure is derived from the same calculation and inherits the problem. The larger difficulty is that only one side of the comparison has been counted. A tablet is not a paperless textbook; it is a manufactured device carrying the emissions of aluminium smelting, semiconductor fabrication and assembly, and the extraction of cobalt, lithium and rare earth elements, followed by the electricity to charge it and the network infrastructure to serve it. Studies comparing print and digital reading generally find the device's embodied impact dominates, so the environmental case depends on how much reading each unit does before it is retired. That is where replacement cycles matter. Tablets are typically replaced every few years as batteries degrade and software support ends, while a printed textbook is used by successive cohorts and, at end of life, is recyclable and biodegradable. Electronic waste is neither: it is the fastest-growing waste stream and contains heavy metals requiring specialised handling that most disposal routes do not provide. The argument's own complaint about new editions also transfers to the medium it prefers, and worsens. A printed edition rendered obsolete still functions; a licensed digital textbook can be revised, withdrawn or expire when a subscription lapses, leaving nothing behind. And the paper it eliminates is a renewable, recycled and widely reclaimed material — the weakest environmental case in the comparison to make the centrepiece.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] The quoted estimate miscalculates by an order of magnitude — fifty reams of five hundred sheets across a hundred teachers is two and a half million sheets, not the two hundred and fifty thousand stated — and the per-student figure is derived from the same calculation, so the argument's only quantitative support does not stand. [Rejecting P2] The claim that a tablet eliminates the impact counts one side of the comparison: devices carry the emissions of smelting, semiconductor fabrication and assembly plus the extraction of cobalt, lithium and rare earths, are replaced every few years as batteries degrade and support ends, and enter the fastest-growing waste stream, whereas paper is renewable, recyclable and biodegradable and a textbook serves successive cohorts. [Rejecting C] The complaint about superseded editions transfers to the preferred medium and worsens there, since an obsolete printed book still functions while a licensed digital text can be revised, withdrawn or expire with a subscription — so the environmental premise does not support replacing textbooks.