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To: Bob Barker, CSUCI Sustainability Task Force

From: Chenglin Lu

Subject: Paperless thesis and its benefits

Date: November 21, 2017

Paperless: the new lifestyle

At CSUCI, many professors I have taken classes of are requiring students to bring real

books instead of E-Book in the manner of avoiding cheating. Some of us believe that paper

is one of the necessities of studying or participating in a society. However, that isnt true in

many aspects. Paperless lifestyle has reduced the cost of majority things and are more

efficient and effective than using papers where it also helps students, who are the future of

the society, to develop a next-generation habit of applying a sustainable lifestyle.

In order to demonstrate the paperless life style, I will be discussing the demand of

going paperless, the benefits brought by paperless, the cost to deploy paperless in our

campus, and the long term externality of paperless lifestyle.

Background

More than ten campuses in the US had established a project of paperless lifestyle. Its

very easy to deploy where the rewards are significant. However, CSUCI havent officially

become a paperless campus. According to CIs annaul waste report, the amount of landfill

waste has increased from 467 tons to 622 tons in the period of 2014-2016 while electricity

energy consumption hasnt change much (< 2%). Reduce paper consuption has a nature of

low cost, efficient, sustainable.

 I posted a survey at SurveyMonkey.com and invited my friends and classmates to

share their opinion of paperless lifestyle. To my surprise, only less than 15% participants

dont like or wont accept the paperless lifestyle. 80% of my clients believe that

professors who enforce students to buy or rent paper-based textbooks are unreasonable

while there is a high percentage of professors still doing that. The report indicatess that

most students are annoyed by professors who reinforces students to use actual paper and

most students understand the benefits of paperless lifestyle.

I am an IT major student where most of my instructor understands and supports the

paperless lifestyle. I have read many essays which analyze the benefits of paperless lifestyle

and the core difficulties of applying it to the society. Most of these writers believe that

paperless is a future trend where time is the only issue. Since papers are containers of

information, most articles explained how digital information container will have a faster

speed on information processing and they explained why the cost of paper is higher than is

surplus by explaining the negative externality to the global human society.

Findings and Implications

I realized that more than 80% students understand the paperless lifestyle and the

benefits of deploying it. Since students are mostly new generation who were born with

smartphone invented, they understand the new technology better. I find out that professors

who arent related to IT\CS\Language prefer traditional paperwork. Since most of their

information isn't retrieved online.

The implications were that people who understand the benefits of paperless cant go

paperless as they want since their professors who are grading them arent letting them do

so. Thats why a official paperless plan annouced by the CSUCI is neccesary.
 Paperless style is a destined future trend due to their nature of effective, efficient,

environmentally friendly, and higher security of privacy. Its a matter of time if our school

is going to deploy it. However, the sooner we deploy it, the more experience we will gain.

Remember, for those who ignore technologies, technologies will eliminate them.