Comment by oopsallmagic
12 days ago
Don't forget the e-waste aspect... You can recycle paper easily, but several rare earth metals and e-ink all mashed together are much more difficult, and require a lot more energy to produce.
Honestly, this is exactly the kind of overconsumption that got us to where we are. I don't care what someone's favorite emoji is, quite frankly, and I don't think it's worth strip mining the Congo just to do a Neat Thing. Use a printer, do it for the sake of your grandchildren's future.
And then place a few crayons at the venue if you care about the smiley.
It's not just paper, perhaps at least run the numbers? Though I completely agree it's likely more environmentally costly.
My initial thought process evolved from coming back from yet another conference, and tossing yet another lanyard (colorful plastic, metal clips) and plastic covering into the garbage. I have done this probably around 50 times. So think replacing 100-200 of these for an academic, far, far more for con staff, sales vendors, etc.
One of the hurdles you would have to overcome is convincing all of the conferences to go with these reusable e-ink badges.
Let's say all the organizers are convinced...why not use a common, non-electronic badge instead, since you have everyone agreeing to a common standard anyway? Perhaps something simple where the conference organizers can print out a paper slip (recycled paper even!) that you insert so they get some customization.
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I'm not putting steaming poo on my badge, it's the concept of customization that's easily shared- "For the social let's all use our lab's logo, and tonight we can use our student org's logo, and tomorrow for the society meetup we could put a picture of the organism we study". Conversation starters (perhaps I do want to put poo on my badge) in what is a social event with many rapidly-changing sub-contexts. Sticker and pin collecting is fun though, so maybe not such a compelling use-case.
Smaller meetings provide markers for name-tags all the time, that's different from the conference-provided ID I'm required to wear in a conference of 6k+ people.