The Top Three Questions People Ask Us

Issue 1: What about Electronic Waste produced by cell phones?

E-waste is definitely an issue today. Electronics manufacturers continue to produce “newer” and “better” technology and market the bleep out of them to encourage our consumer driven society to constantly upgrade and buy new equipment, when their older technology still works just fine.

This is a real problem. One of the reasons we designed GO Paperless!™ to leverage text messaging and email is because this technology is basic and exists today and does not require the user to upgrade or buy new phones. It works on all cell phones, you don’t need to upgrade to use it, which also means that it is not as sexy as applications made for the iPhone or new Google phones.

Does this give GO Paperless!™ a disadvantage in today’s market? Absolutely. We are true to our principles however and believe in leveraging what we already have to be able to do more, instead of encouraging more consumerism and waste. We believe in using things for their entire useful life, getting multiple uses out of our existing infrastructure and encouraging others to do the same.

If you are interested in proper disposal or recycling of E- waste you can check out the following link: http://www.epsc.ca/

Issue 2: Sourcing of technology especially cell phones and mining practices in the Democratic Republic of Congo:

This is another big issue. It is true that cell phones as well as laptops, computer chips, stereo equipment and VCR’s all use an ore called coltan. This ore comes from many places around the world including Canada, Australia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Unfortunately, like the diamond mines in Africa, rebel groups in these regions exploit the mines and their workers and use the profits to fund even more war and suffering. Due to the increase in global demand for technology, these rebel groups have discovered that they can exploit this resource too.

It makes me very sad. Should we stop using computers, cell phones and all other electronics because of this problem? That seems to be the real question. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that tracing of sourcing in a global market place is extremely difficult, therefore how do we know if our equipment uses coltan from Australia or Africa?

The UN is working on it and I hope that we can eliminate this issue by investigating the sources and forcing technology manufacturers to be open about where their supplies are coming from so that consumers can make ethical decisions when purchasing their technology. Do I think that GO Paperless!™ is adding to this problem? No I don’t.

Issue 3: Are the founders of GO Paperless!™ capitalistic, opportunistic, frauds?

One of the major roadblocks that we have in solving our environmental crises is the disconnect between the environmentalists and the average consumer and businesses that drive the current market.

That is where GO Paperless!™ comes in. We, the founders, are in our late 20’s early 30’s and for most of our lives been brought up in the main stream tract of consumerism. But thanks to the environmentalists, that have done a tremendous job bringing the issue of the environment to the main stream, we are informed and passionate about change.

As a result, we have opted to leverage our knowledge, education and experience to help bring about solutions to help rectify our environmental issues. And we have opted to do this by building a family business together that according to our understanding of the market, will provide a service that will not only provide a commercially viable alternative to paper marketing but will also be an attractive alternative for the main stream marketers and advertising agencies so that they are encouraged to embrace change.

A solution like GO Paperless!™ attempts to achieve a balance between business, the environment and the privacy of consumers, so that we can work towards innovation that is good for the triple bottom. People, Planet, Profit. Because without profit, it will be next to impossible to get those in power to adopt change.

We provide a solution that lets marketers leverage technology, add interactivity to their advertising, get better metrics through measurement and provide consumers with real valuable information about their products and services so that consumers can make informed choices.

I encourage you to take some time to read through our website and hopefully you will begin to see what we are trying to achieve. We wrote all the words, made all the graphics, programmed the whole website together, as a family, to tell our story.

Please know that we cannot achieve this change without your support.