Some reductions in office use of paper, partly as the result of electronic communication, are beginning to be realized. In 1996, Nortel's paper purchases decreased 7 percent from 1995 through use of electronic mail, the company's Intranet, paperless record keeping, and two-sided copying and printing. Because people still like to read pages rather than scroll down a computer screen, searching for a paper substitute may be complementary to using current display technology to achieve conservation.
Electric paper holds promise as a substitute.
Electric paper is being developed at Xerox PARC as well as at several universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Kent State University. As an attractive alternative to paper, electric paper could produce indirect but substantial benefits to the climate. They also need to have images refreshed 30 times per second. In addition, bi-stable displays would store images without needing a power source, so that overall energy use would be reduced ten million times relative to current display technology. It is estimated that a bi-stable display with the functionality of a laptop computer could run for 6 months on two AA batteries.