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Break chains to save trees

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Why you can trust SCMP
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I RECENTLY received a letter from a friend asking me to do two things: first, send a small donation to a hospital in Britain and, secondly, retype the letter and send it, together with a list of other participants (in the letter chain) to date, to 10 people I know.

Simple enough. But I thought about it for a moment and my mind started to boggle.

The letter received came with 20 lists of 10 names each, including my own on the latest one.

This suggests to me that, assuming every previous recipient of the letter did what he or she was requested to do, 111 trillion (111 followed by 18 zeros) letters had been floating around in Hong Kong by the time I got my letter (at level 20 in the chain). And the hospital in Britain would have received more money than there is in many national treasuries put together.

Unfortunately, thousands of trillions of pieces of paper would have been consumed. I wonder how many forests that would amount to.

If I were to do what my friend requested, I would have to send out 10 letters, each with a 21-page namelist of previous participants. That would mean 220 pieces of paper plus 10 envelopes. Together with postage, photocopying costs and the donation to thehospital in Britain, that would cost me about HK$200.

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