[Air-l] Journal of Industrial Ecology -- full contents of special Internet issue available free on Web

[Ken Friedman]

Dear Colleagues,

The Journal of Industrial Ecology has just published a special issue 
on electronic commerce, the Internet and the environment. Funding 
from the United States National Science Foundation has permitted the 
journal to make the entire full contents of this issue available on 
the web. To access the journal and select article for free download, 
go to URL:

http://mitpress.mit.edu/JIE/e-commerce

JIE is a peer-reviewed quarterly journal owned by Yale University and 
published by MIT Press.

You'll find a description of this issue below.

I recommend this issue of JIE.

Best regards,

Ken Friedman

--

E-commerce and the Environment: Good News or Bad?
Insights from the Journal of Industrial Ecology

E-commerce and information technology (IT) have been heralded as a 
source of dramatic and even inevitable environmental improvement. 
They have also been decried as energy hogs that will force society to 
"dig more coal."

Emerging research, published in the prestigious Journal of Industrial 
Ecology, (and available for free in full text at 
<http://mitpress.mit.edu/JIE/e-commerce>), is beginning to move 
expert understanding beyond opposing assertions. This complex and 
more nuanced understanding suggests that:

- Seemingly small decisions-by consumers, manufacturers, or shipping 
companies-can have large effects, often shifting environmental 
impacts from desirable to undesirable or vice versa. For instance, 
the energy efficiency of using a digital library improves 
significantly with increasing usage of the on-line articles and 
declines if users must drive somewhere to gain access to the 
information. The greenhouse gas emission reductions from e-grocery 
home delivery depend highly on the choice of delivery vehicle (car, 
van, etc.) and fuel type.

- When positive effects from IT occur, such as reductions in 
pollution or energy use, they often fall in the range of 5-20 
percent, not the four- or five-fold improvements that some have 
advocated (or hoped for).

- The diverse and complex use of information technologies makes 
unintended consequences and indirect impacts hard to predict, let 
alone analyze in any scientific sense. This is especially true when 
trying to predict how businesses and consumers might use increased 
time and productivity gains from the use of e-commerce and other 
information technology applications.

These insights emerge from a special issue of the Journal of 
Industrial Ecology on E-commerce, the Internet and the Environment. 
The Journal is a peer-reviewed international quarterly published by 
MIT Press and owned by Yale University.

Articles in the special issue analyze the environmental consequences 
of telecommuting and assess the transformation of the wholesale, 
warehouse and retail sectors of the economy by network technology. 
The environmental impact of conventional and electronic approaches to 
grocery shopping, book selling and scholarly journals are compared 
and the possibility of using product tags to improve recycling is 
explored. The research ranges from the U.S. to Germany, from Finland 
to Japan.

David Rejeski, Director of the Foresight and Governance Project at 
the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, 
D.C. served as the guest editor for the special issue. Support for 
the special issue was provided by AT&T and the U.S. National Science 
Foundation.

Journalists, students, and representatives from developing countries 
or non-governmental organizations can request a print copy of the 
special issue by writing to

indecol at yale.edu.