Green IT...beer...and telcos

A story in today's (July 21st 2009) Business Daily indicates that an NGO involved in recycling, collects 4.5 tonnes of (rinsed off) beer labels from East African Breweries...EVERYDAY! 4.5 tonnes! Lets look at the numbers, off the back of a cigarette pack...assume only 30-35% of the population is of drinking age, and that one half of that population does consume alcohol...further that , of that portion, only one half consume beer either daily or occassionally (with the rest doing hock, spirits, wines, traditional brews, etc). Still....4.5 tonnes of labels per day?

Lets move to mobile companies and prepaid cards. Prepaid cards possibly weigh more than beer labels (owing to thickness/lamination, etc) and there are definitely more mobile subscribers than there are drinkers. Kenya has abt 18 million mobile subscribers, of which at least 90% are prepaid - assume only half of the prepaid users purchase a low denomination scratch card (that weight more than or the same as a beer label) every other day....how much more paper is littering the streets and can it not also be recycled?