WhatTheyThink’s Going Green has joined forces with Two Sides to help address the “perceptions” that paper destroys forests, that electronic media are “greener” than print and paper, and that recycling is the solution to all environmental ills. Last week, we referenced a post from Dead Tree Edition, but in another post, our friend Mr. Tree (if that is his name) also cites another vaguely relevant statistic, namely, that the sitcom The Office—which centers around the staff of a dysfunctional, yet fictional, paper company—had the worst season premiere in its nine-year history. “The episode had the show’s second-lowest audience ever, attracting ‘just 4.32 million viewers, down 46 percent among 18–49-year-olds from its premiere last year,’ reports Vulture.com.” Why should you care? Well, TV viewership has been declining almost as fast as newspaper and magazine circulation, and ratings figures don’t often taken into account Tivo-ing, Hulu-ing, and even the “old-fashioned” renting DVDs of shows. (In fact, I can’t recall the last time I ever watched a TV show at it’s actual broadcast time.) Mr. Tree’s point wasn’t necessarily that there was any great cachet in the show being about a paper company; it could just as well have been about any kind of company. He does point out that some idled papermaking machinery has gone from making writing and copy paper to paper for other purposes, such as diapers, thanks—he says—to the aging of the Baby Boomers. We shan’t dwell on this for too long, but it does remain true that from generation to generation we are seeing less of a reliance on paper. As an example, while traveling a couple of weeks ago for a WTT EVS shoot, I had happily printed out Google Maps of the destinations we needed to go to, while my traveling companion—about 15–20 years younger than I—would have none of it and relied on a GPS app in his mobile phone. It still got us lost... Generational shifts will decide what applications for paper will persist, and which will not. For more Two Sides facts see http://www.twosides.us/mythsandfacts.