The move by tour operators Powder Byrne and Cazenove & Loyd to stop selling their holidays through brochures and concentrate on email and the internet is a fantastically practical solution to a monstrous problem. Millions of holiday brochures are produced each year and promptly chucked because they are out of date.

There is a travel agent near me. Every Tuesday there are piles of brochures tied up in bundles sitting by the bins for disposal totally untouched, unread. The amount of money, energy and world resources going into those piles of rubbish is frightening.

While applauding the idea to dispense with glossy expensive brochures with prices that are out of date before they even reach you, I'm not sure I would be ready to go exclusively over to email and internet when researching my holidays.

Already, some companies don't send brochures. It saves postage and is quicker for them to send brochure information with attachments by email or just send an email with a link to an internet site.

If the catch line of any of these looks remotely interesting, you print them out and read them when you're not so pressurised. If they really need half hour's attention, you read them on the train or in bed. There just isn't time in the office to pore over them when you're on deadlines. Most office workers are so weighed down with work-related emails, spams and other rubbish, they can't do anything but a quick surf on the net for a holiday deal at lunchtime. If they do like the look of something, they need a print out to look at leisure at home.

Most frustratingly, printing out can become a 30-minute job. In our office printing out an attachment is a nightmare because we share a printer with other desks, stuff gets stuck in a queue and there are gremlins in the attachments which can mean on the busiest day of the week you find the printer spewing out 20 pieces of blank paper for every one page it prints out (is this an Apple Mac attachment incompatibility thing?). With the inbox groaning with emails from people you've never heard of all day long, with catchlines in capitals and bright red exclamation marks besides them, you end up feeling totally delighted when you receive something in the post on paper. Sheer luxury!

The problem with companies going paperless is that they transfer all the printing hassles and production costs to the consumer. If that leads to cheaper holidays, travellers are happy to put up with it (most of us have got used to dealing with low-cost airlines electronically in return for getting cheaper prices). But I think the cleverest companies will offer a choice. Print-outs in the post (such as Cazenove & Loyd will offer us 'Luddites') or the web.

I really don't need glossy paper to get excited about a holiday (it really is too wasteful), but I do need print-outs. In a job stuck up against a computer screen reading hundreds of emails all day long in nine point print, I don't want to go home in the evening, log on and crane my neck at holiday websites. There will always be a place for a bit of good old-fashioned paper.