Verdigris, the environmental awareness initiative is asking the printing and paper industries and their customers to Go Google-less. The plea is in response to Google’s Paperless 2013 campaign which urges people to stop using paper.

Verdigris, headed by long time industry consultant and analyst Laurel Brunner, wants everyone to stop using the Google search engine and related products such as Google+, Chrome or Android in the hope that Google will reconsider.

The Paperless 2013 campaign claims that relying exclusively on digital communications instead of using paper benefits the environment. However according to Verdigris Paperless 2013 is more about getting people to use cloud storage, online bill management, accounting and e-signatures. Google and its campaign partners are using an environmental message to encourage use of their own technologies, not to aid environmental sustainability. Verdigris says their arguments are ill-founded and potentially damaging to the environment.

Electronic devices cannot be recycled; paper can. Unlike paper electronic devices are not based on a sustainable resource, but depend on oil-based plastics and rare earths neither of which can be replenished. Electronic devices require huge amounts of energy to support and maintain the content they deliver, whereas paper based content has a one-time carbon footprint. Electronic devices create an environmentally damaging waste stream that cannot easily be managed. Paper can be reused, recycled and is disposed of responsibly when it reaches its end of life.

Verdigris wants enough people Go Google-less to get Google to reconsider its campaign. At the very least, they might try to better understand the environmental impact of media and about what industry can to do help reduce environmental impacts. The people using Google technologies are the basis of the Google business model: the higher the number of users, the higher Google can charge advertisers. Get the user number down and we undermine the source of Google’s income. The threat of harm to its revenue model might encourage Google to get better informed and be more responsible in its environmental positioning, particularly as relates to print and paper.

To change your default search engine

At the top of your browser’s tool bar is the search field. Here you will see the logo of your default search engine, its name or a spyglass and a little down arrow. Click on the down arrow and you will see a list of search engines. Select something other than Google to be your default search tool.