MAY 19

This is definitely good news. I hope other businesses work on reducing their carbon footprints as well.

I have to say brilliant news, but since i got my kindle i've purchased more e-books than i would have purchased paperbacks. I wonder if the Cleantech study took that into account when you consider the additional network infrastructure needed to cope with the increased amount of purchasing.

Has the energy used to manufacture the e-reader been taken into account?

Personally I don't buy enough books for it to be worth me investing in an e-reader.

Soon enough, the Kindle is going to be obsolete, the data format that the Kindle encodes its content in will be obsolete and you will have no choice but to upgrade your Kindle or purchase another manufacturer's offering.

The carbon footprint story is just marketing greenwash. How many readers is the average consumer going to purchase in their lifetime? If the ebook reader manufacturers have anything to do with it, quite a lot.

Meanwhile paper books are always ready for random access. Books written on paper can read by anyone regardless of whether they can afford to purchase an e-book reader or not.

Couple things bother me about the so-called lower "carbon footprint" of e-readers like Kindle:

You have to plug it in, so it has an infinitely scalable carbon footprint, where a book, has a finite carbon footprint once produced. So for the sake of argument, let's say that a Kindle lasts 100 years. Compare that to a book for an equal period of time - will the low footprint of the Kindle still hold up? Doubtful.

But as others have said, (planned) obsolescence will ensure it doesn't last 10 years. What will happen to all those Kindle readers? That's right... landfill. There goes a carbon footprint.

People are going to be upset when all the books are digital and we have a huge electricity crisis in which we lose all of our books.

;P

Paper/Tress. Vs Electronic/Electricity.

Well Paper is organic.

Electronic completely takes out the need for the paper. Nonetheless, it requires electricity to maintain, and decomposes in an inorganic way.

From the green prospective, one could say that books would be better. But if one could find a proper means to dispose, and to charge the kindles(solar energy), then they would be better.

E-Books are a step into the future for readers. I only hope that this doesn't eradicate the old fashioned way reading.

I just use my library, and borrow books. the ultimate recycling... and probably a very small carbon footprint, though I doubt you'll see a study on that.

While I think this is a great idea right now, I'm going to throw in a large boulder of salt, by saying that I think it'll be wise to consider the possible effects of solar maximum that we'll experience with out ever increasing reliance on all things electronic. I honestly hope nothing happens and that the grid will be able to handle what the sun throws our way. If our systems can't handle it, there are going to be a lot of people who are going to be rather annoyed that they can't read their books because the gadget of their choice doesn't work properly.

Like most things this has a slightly negative effect and a slight positive effect.

While this does use electricity and it does decompose in an inorganic way, the analysis that this is an infinitely scalable carbon footprint goes both ways. To cut the 'footprint' of the reader and it's lifetime of electricity usage fully in half, all one has to do is purchase 2 lousy books. If 20 books per year were purchased over it's entire lifetime, the ongoing electricity needed to run the Kindle for reading those would be so small in comparison, you couldn't graph it on the same scale.

After that, you can power the Kindle by renewables that wipe the energy factor out of the equation.

After that, you can even supplant other computer uses with most of the readers because they have internet / web capabilities.

Those arguments against this being 'green' just don't wash.

It is good to know that the demand for kindle books is more than print books, but simultaneously this also increases the concern about disposing the electronic gadgets.
Thanks for sharing this information.

I would buy an e-book reader for travelling on a long trip. When I went to South Korea for 8 months in 1996, I took just 24 paper books with me (some were hardcover, most paperback). I needed half a 26 inch long suitcase for those books, and they used up 1/4 of my baggage weight allowance. I could take dozens of books on my next trip with an e-reader and not even approach my baggage allowance. For me that is the most valuable aspect of an e-book reader.

I like the storage idea of ebooks, but I much prefer the real thing. Agree that ewaste has many drawbacks. What happens if you lose or damage your ereader? Lose all the books? Yeah, you can have a fire in your house but luckily more people lose or damage or have electronic devices go on the fritz than have fires. You can loan your paperback to a friend or co-worker, but you aren't going to loan your ereader to them. And, what about some form or electronic censorship to rival Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Maybe an evirus purposely sent out to destroy certain ebooks? Books recycle easily, are biodegradeable and take on their own patina from hands that cradle them as they are read and re-read. Yes, there are the transportation costs of books and the energy considerations of facilities needed to house them, but there are many other ways that we can go greener, without the mass slaughter or contraception of books. Okay, just trying to add a little levity to this whole discussion.

Having moved thousands of books over the years as I shifted houses there's certainly a fair amount of petroleum that has been burned to move what would take almost no energy if all of those volumes had been ebooks.

Loosing your books if you loose your ereader is not a problem if you take a moment to back up your books on a hard drive (or better two). Store you backup in a separate place and then your books (and photos) will be safe from fire and thief.

(I've been downloading ebooks to my netbook and then moving them over to the ereader. Takes almost no extra time and I've got a backup copy. Then from time to time I backup my netbook on an external hard drive which I store in a separate location.)

Traveling. That's a huge advantage. I've often left on long trips with several large travel guides as well as books for reading. Often my books have been the heaviest items in my pack.

This last winter I took my first ebook trip. I used paper books for Malaysia and Bali and an ebook for Java. My last paper book trip, thank you. The only thing I want to do is to print out the city maps so that I don't have to pull my ereader out in crowds.

Ereaders, like any sort of electronic gear, can be recycled. Perhaps not 100% at this point in time, but we're getting better plastics and recycling processes. Within a few years there should be no reason why ereaders or any sort of gear would go to the landfill.

When I plugged my Kindle in to charge a moment ago, it was showing a draw fluxuating around 3.5-4w, which dropped to 2.7 a bit before finishing charging. I have to charge 1-2 times a month, and the Internets tell me it takes about three hours to fully charge. so (3.5w * 3h * 18 charges a year * 100 years) / 1000 = 18.9 kWh over a hundred years of use. That's about half a US gallon of gas, according to Wikipedia.

Speaking of someone who has hauled around tens of thousands of pounds of books by truck (and hundreds by airplane), I'm going to say the electricity usage of a Kindle is negligible. Any calculation on the environmental cost of a Kindle should focus on the production cost and lifespan.

No doubt, I am really opposed to the deforestation that book-printing creates. But in my opinion, it is much better to re-use old books instead of using technology to solve this problem.
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