The environmental issues are always important to consider. (I supposed I now need to go back and add one more point to my list...)
Both film and digital cameras processes direct waste streams. Everything pretty much does, so we can't — at least as far as I can tell — have no environmental impact in our lives. The magnitude and type of effect are to be considered.
On the negative side for digital would be the greater amount of circuitry in the camera, no doubt. Compared to unpowered or low power film cameras, there is a potential cost in the charging and in producing and disposing of the batteries, too.
On the film side, there is the material used to make the film itself — you need a bit of it for every image you make. There are also environmental costs in manufacturing the film, both for the film substrate and the chemicals with which it is coated. There is a non-negligible packaging impact as well, especially given the need to fully protect it from light intrusion. Then there are the chemical processes involved in manufacturing photographic films and papers.
The processing of film also generates chemical waste. This is probably worse on a picture by picture basis when individual photographers do their own darkroom work, at least as compared to large scale processing where a lot of film (or print media) is run through the same process.
While we may not need the darkroom with all of its chemicals for digital printing, we do need a computer and peripherals including the printer. On the other hand, we would likely have the computer anyway.
Printing is an issue no matter what — both optical/chemical and digital printing obviously use paper. (The paper uses other materials beside pure "paper" in many cases.) As to the differences between the inks (or pigments) used for digital printing versus the chemicals uses for optical/chemical printing, perhaps someone has some, ahem, data on that? This would involve the nature of the chemicals themselves, the quantities used, the waste streams generated by manufacturing and using them.
On an anecdotal basis, folks I know who have (or used to) do optical/chemical printing (or related processes such as dye-transfer) eventually became much more concerned about the health impacts of repeated exposure to such chemicals.
There's no free ride when it comes to environmental impacts.
Dan
Dec 24, 2016 at 07:34 PM
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