This post has been percolating for a bit and I’m finally getting it out of my queue... Back on April 21, the day before Earth Day, I visited a “green fair” at the College of St. Rose down in Albany, NY, at the invitation of Ariva (formerly RIS Paper, and not to be confused with Ariva Skin Care, as I almost was while looking for their link). It was billed as the “first annual” event of its kind and, grammar notwithstanding, it offered a small but dedicated collection of exhibitors. (There is actually a car-sharing service in Albany—not Zipcar—which is a great idea. I wish we had one in Saratoga, as I need to drive so seldom that it would be great to not have to own a car.) One exhibitor that caught my attention was called “Sustainability House” (my thoughts were subsequently riven by a very strange remake of Animal House). It was a student residence whose tenants are 100% dedicated to sustainable, environmentally-friendly, and energy-efficient living. I was talking to them for a bit, and was looking to gauge the extent to which green initiatives an sustainability are hot topics on college campuses and among young people in general. After all, it is teens and post-teens who will be driving these trends in the future, not middle-aged folk like me. Turns out, and this should come as no surprise, students are far and away much much greener than their forebears. As one of the kids told me, “We grew up in the technology boom [of the 1990s] and we’re now starting to see the effects of that.” They were concerned with the environmental issues they were inheriting, and wanted to do something about it. After all, the problems us older folks are and have been causing will likely hit critical mass after we’re gone. Is a poisonous environment a legacy we want to leave to our kids? I am in the process of updating my special WhatTheyThink report on Sustainability in the Printing Graphic Communications Industry, and the one thing I keep coming back to in the context of the conversation I had with the kids was our myriad media choices in the context of sustainability—we are quite obviously living in a multimedia world. What do you think those kids’ chosen media forms are? Print? Or are they more likely to be texting and interacting via social media? And does that choice really have anything to do with sustainability? Or is more a case of, “Here is what our preferences are vis-à-vis media and communication. Now, how do we make those choices more sustainable, whatever they may be?” It’s not about squabbling over which medium is greener; it’s about acknowledging what media different people prefer and finding ways of making them all sustainable. Young people may be the drivers of environmental sustainability, but since time immemorial, they have been the drivers of predominant media. (I was the TV generation, helping wound and maim magazines and newspapers until the Internet generation could come along and try to finish the job.) As electronic media evolve and those new forms become even more important, it behooves us to talk about the environmental impact of electronic devices—and of the Internet in general. As I have said in umpteen reports going back at least 15 years, communication is not just about print anymore. Ergo, neither is environmental sustainability.