Waste Not, Want Not

Muhammed Saleem puts together this analysis of AT&T's ridiculous iphone bills. Yesterday on the news there was a story about a 300 page phone bill that was so big it had to be delivered in a box. That's a load of dead trees, the Ents are going to be pissed.

AT&T goes on a rampage: will destroy 74,535 trees to make iphone service bills

While the exact number is yet to be determined, current consensus puts the number of iphones sold at 270,000 for the first day and a half of sales, and expectations at around 10 million devices to be sold by the end of 2008. if during this time at&t does not get its act together and stop sending out bills that are averaging 50 pages in length, they’re going to have a lot more than just unsatisfied customers after them.

Before we go on, let’s look at some quick paper facts (pdf):

A cord of wood is approximately 8 feet wide, 4 feet deep, and 4 feet high. A cord of air-dried, dense hardwood (oak, hickory, etc.) weighs roughly 2 tons, about 15-20 percent of which is water. It has been estimated that one cord of this wood will yield one of these approximate quantities of products:

• 1,000-2,000 pounds of paper (depending on the process)
• 942 100-page, hard-cover books
• 61,370 No. 10 business envelopes
• 4,384,000 commemorative-sized postage stamps
• 460,000 personal checks
• 1,200 copies of National Geographic
• 2,700 copies of an average daily newspaper

That said, with 10 million iphones expected to be sold by the end of 2008, that means 10 million at&t customers that can expect to get 50-page bills, 12 times a year, totaling 6 billion sheets of paper wasted (at around 80,500 sheets of paper per tree, this would mean around 74,535 trees) because of at&t’s stupidity. of course sales aren’t going to stop there so it’s up to us to stop at&t from continuing this madness.

Post copied from muhammedsaleem.com