Sunday, September 19, 2010

Are E-Readers environmentally Friendlier?

I recently found a great new blog to read! The Parchment Girl.  She writes some great articles on her blog. I was going to feature one of her blogs on Do E-Readers Cause Eyes Strain versus Paper Books.  However, I found this article on her blog today and wanted to feature it instead. The above article is great too, so check it out.

Also, I am only pasting the first few paragraphs of this article here and then there will be a link to her page. Please leave me a comment here on my blog too with your thoughts on this article. Enjoy, I know I found this article very interesting!


What is the environmental impact of e-readers compared to paper books? This question has kept experts running in mathematical circles ever since e-reader sales boomed in 2007. There are literally dozens of factors that could be weighed in determining the eco-friendliness of e-readers. How many trees must be cut down to manufacture the product? How much water is used to produce one e-reader? One paper book? How much electricity and fossil fuels are consumed in the manufacturing process? How many nonrenewable natural resources are used? What about toxic chemicals? These are just a sampling of the questions environmental experts are asking. I’ve gone as deep in my research as one possibly can using the internet, and have come out more confused than ever. So instead of trying to answer these questions comprehensively, I’m instead going to outline the myriad of factors that must be weighed when trying to figure out the environmental impact of e-readers and paper books, draw my own conclusions, and let you do the same.

Water Consumption

Every year, the publishing industry uses over a hundred billion gallons of water to print untold numbers of books. Researchers estimate that seventy nine gallons of water are needed to manufacture one e-reader and seven gallons for one printed book (two gallons if the book is printed on recycled paper). E-books require a little under two cups of water to produce. Doing the math, an e-reader becomes more efficient in its water use after reading about a dozen books on it.1 It’s realistic to expect that someone who spends $150 on an e-reader will read at least that many books on it during its lifetime, so in this category, the e-reader obviously comes out on top.
Too continue this article click HERE


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Good question. Right now I think eReaders are more environmentally friendly. However, when the government will finally decide to end the prohobition on cannabis and we will be able to make paper from industrial cannabis (which you cannot somke) the tables might turn.

http://www.ManOfLaBook.com

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the link to the article. I enjoyed it a lot, as this topic seems to come up often.

Kate Scott said...

Thanks for featuring my article, Rebecca! = )

Wolfe said...

No problem kate! I am happy you agreed.

Anonymous said...

Good Afternoon

Can I link to this post please?