The Environmental Impact of Digital Photography

I have worked the entire photographic industry from camera stores, custom labs, commercial photography, and the Great Yellow Father itself – Kodak. I was at Kodak Canada when Kodak started winding down its silver based operations and at that point I looked for other employment options.

Those outside the photographic industry may not realise the environmental impact that digital photography has had. The biggest one would be water conservation.

Your average colour photo lab went through massive amounts of water to rinse film and paper prints free of the chemicals used in the process. When I worked at a custom darkroom lab, it was not unusual to print three 8 X 10 prints to produce the final good print that would go to the customer.

Every morning the lab printed off approximately 5 to 20 feet of 4 inch paper and 5 inch paper to calibrate the printers that made the small prints and proofs.

Huge amounts of water was consumed to clean the test prints, never mind the prints that went to the customer. And don't forget there was water in the developer, bleach and fixer.

Also, consider the amount of paper that was consumed. Every picture taken was printed. We did not know if a picture was out of focus, or poorly exposed until we received it from the lab. Add to the environmental impact bill the amounts of water used in the coating of film and paper as well as the water (darn good clean water too) consumed in the manufacturing of the base film and paper.

How big is this reduction in paper consumption? A paper mill that was supplying the base paper to both Kodak and Fuji in the United States closed recently.

I started thinking about this one day when I went to a camera shop to make a print from the chip in my digital camera. Insert chip into printer, select and crop, push print button, out comes the print with not a drop of water used in the process. The “photo lab” was no bigger than a breadbox.

Oh yes, let us not forget the electricity consumed in the old process, and the fossil fuel consumed moving heavy amounts of paper place to place to place.

What I have mentioned here describing the vast amount of resources consumed with the old silver halide processes is just the tip of the iceberg.

Perhaps, digital photography had to happen for the sake of the environment. There have been other changes that have happened, and more are on the way. But that is another blog entry to come.

John Kerr