DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY AND POLLUTION

Thursday, December 01, 2005

So there is news going around that digital photography is helping to reduce pollution(See news, and a mention in dpguru.com). This is basically due to the fact that there are many chemicals involved in processing the film or as part of the film, which will no longer be needed in digital photography.

While this may be a valid argument, it is still difficult to say that going digital helps improve the environment to some extent. The factor that I see here is that a digital camera eventually ends up as a e-waste which is not biodegradable and needs to be disposed with care. Yes, film cameras also end up as waste, but then comes the question of how often do you decide to throw away a camera. It is most likely that people will have to upgrade their digital cameras frequently just like they upgrade computers, which means that older cameras get junk status very quickly. Take for example, you would have bought a Canon EOS 300D only 2 years back, but today you would definitely feeling that it is an old camera and would be thinking of upgrading. Film camera bodies last much longer that way. In addition to generating e-waste, a digital camera includes far many components that are likely to have a not-so-environment-friendly manufacturing process.

Despite all this, it is still possible that digital cameras are better than film cameras, but it is a fact that is best asserted only with a more involving research.