eco-friendly photography

(image borrowed from American Photo Magazine online)


It's hard for me to differentiate which is worse for the environment, digital or darkroom photography. As a lab assistant during university, I was aware that dumping exhausted darkroom chemicals down the drain was not exactly environmentally friendly, and wondered where the barrels of used negative processing chemicals were taken when filled to the brim. I can only imagine how much waste is produced by factories that making silver gelatin photo paper.

Digital photography has created its own set of issues, from energy output to paper waste. American Photo Magazine offers 13 tips to be a green photographer, and like many other publications and organizations, guides the photographer to offset their carbon footprint. I am in complete agreement that we, people as a whole, should take responsibility, but to place the burden on the consumer alone seems unbalanced.

I first started thinking about this a while back when the Australian airline Qantas announced it would provide ways for its customers to offset their carbon footprint: Under the new program, Qantas and Jetstar passengers can elect to offset their share of flight emissions on an ongoing basis by making a small contribution through qantas.com and jetstar.com. But what happens if Qantas fails to achieve all the initiatives outlined in this press release? How are they held accountable (is it possible to)? And is it fair that customers are solely responsible for paying to offset their footprint? I personally think that Qantas should donate a portion of each sale rather than ask customers to fork over additional dollars. It should be an incentive that the customer takes on his/her own. Interestingly enough Qantas recently announced that it is added a slew of new services and features to their economy flights - which I'm sure require a lot of energy use etc.

So going back to American Photo, I would have liked to read in the article how the American Photo office is implementing their own advice. Additionally, I would like to see how companies like HP, Epson, Nikon, Canon - any establishment with a foothold in digital photography - is taking steps to reduce or offset their carbon footprint.

I believed that every individual - within reason - needs to take responsibility for the environment, but companies should share the burden with their customer base.