Study paints Kindle e-reader a dark shade of green
Claims that the Amazon Kindle electronic reader is more environmentally friendly than paper books hold up, according to an analysis by the Cleantech Group.
The research and media company drew on existing studies to do a lifecycle analysis and found that the carbon emissions from electronic books are far lower than traditional book publishing.
Taking into account the manufacturing and mining required to produce an electronic device still gives the Amazon Kindle a significant edge, according to the study which was done by Emma Ritch.
"The roughly 168 kg of CO2 produced throughout the Kindle's lifecycle is a clear winner against the potential savings: 1,074 kg of CO2 if replacing three books a month for four years; and up to 26,098 kg of CO2 when used to the fullest capacity of the Kindle DX. Less-frequent readers attracted by decreasing prices still can break even at 22.5 books over the life of the device," she wrote in conclusion.
(Credit:
Cleantech Group)
E-readers aren't typically marketed as environmentally sound, but their environmental impact is now becoming a topic of discussion and research.
In a test, six colleges in the U.S. will make textbooks available on the Kindle DX specifically to use less paper. "Sustainability is the driving force behind Princeton using the Kindle," a representative told The New York Times in May.
Still, there are some obvious environmental drawbacks to using electronic devices--production of a Kindle produces 168 kilograms of carbon dioxide compared to 7.46 kilograms for a book, the Cleantech Group says citing various sources. Like reading a newspaper on a PC, electronic readers need electricity to run.
Electronic waste, too, is a growing problem many tech gadget owners have yet to fully address. On this point, Amazon has said that it will establish a recycling program for the Kindle and its battery by mail to reduce electronic waste.
The Cleantech Group argues that the electronic reader industry can make a significant impact once people start transitioning from paper media en masse: "A user that purchasers fewer than 22.5 books per year would take longer to neutralize the emissions resulting from the e-reader, and even longer to help reduce emissions attributed to the publishing industry," according to the study.
Intuitively, the basic conclusion of the Cleantech Group analysis makes sense: the more you reduce your use of paper media in a single electronic device, the less you'll pollute by harvesting and shipping physical goods. But as with many proposed "fixes" to environmental problems, there are trade-offs.
Ultimately, it comes down to how an e-reader is used. If a person continues to buy books and print periodicals and doesn't recycle the product, the environmental impact could potentially be negative, according to this study.
Martin LaMonica is a senior writer for CNET's Green Tech blog. He started at CNET News in 2002, covering IT and Web development. Before that, he was executive editor at IT publication InfoWorld. E-mail Martin. 
Although to further depress the benefit of the Kindle, you need to know, that according to Amazon, people who buy a Kindle, continue to buy paper books as well, and many of the books they buy for their e-reading, represent additional books.
In other words, you can't hold the rate someone reads constant. They actually read more books now, than before the purchase, and its hard to call that any real savings.
The most environmentally friendly thing to do, is not read at all.
Or eat anything but bean sprouts.
Or undertake any productive venture that raises anyone's standard of living above the starkest level of poverty.
Hm...
Also some people like to read at lunch time at work but don't have access to the internet at work, so they rely on books.
That is the day, when the ebook device has had a great impact on the environment, but that won't happen, until they are ubiquitous, and cheaper, a lot larger, and more convenient to use as a method for making 'handouts'.
The reality ebook reader as replacing the novel, simply hasn't happened at all. Ebook readers are also, still readers of regular paper novels, for the most part, they haven't given up the habit, only supplemented their habits.
If you bought those same $9.99 book in hardback your cost would be $15.00 each, for an overall SAVINGS of $186.29 for 22.5 books, and you'd normally get free shipping. Plus, you have the benefit of passing a hard cover book to a friend, selling it on eBay or donating it to a library. You can't any of that with a Kindle book.
The Kindle is WILDLY overpriced.
Kindle books are delivered free, and in under a minute. You can carry hundreds around with you, as well as newspapers, magazines, and blogs. They can be shared by others on your account. They can be searched. You can lookup words in the buil-in dictionary. They create no clutter in your home, and require no packing and unpacking when you move. You can't do any of that with a dead tree book.
The Kindle is a great bargain.
But still, you make a good point, in order to save the $299 price of the Kindle 2, within 22.5 books (an arbitrary number taken from the article, but why not)....you'd have to save $299/22.5 = $13.28 per book.
They'd have to almost give away the books, in order for someone to make up the difference that quickly.
But, there are other reasons to buy the ereader....carry your whole library around at once, type of thing...
Still the ereader needs to get down around $99 to make a lot of sense for most people, I think.
But when it does....watch out. Buy a book, not overnight delivery, but instant. Carry your whole library with you. Frankly easier on the eyes....adjust the font how you want, get foreign books, self published books, from an economic point of view, books that don't make economic sense, say because they have a niche market of 100 people...might still be carried anyway....nothing goes out of print.
You live forever, without sickness....oh wait....scratch the last two, probably not happening.
As for buying more books, yes, it's true I buy more from Amazon - the 9.99 bestseller price is no doubt hurting local bookstores and discount clubs/stores the most, as that is where you save quite a bit of money and time. Not to mention the saved carbon emissions from fewer trips across town for the purchase. There are, however, still too many books not available in any e-format (although that is rapidly declining), thus the purchases that were seen in the first year of Kindle sales didn't change - those hard to find paper books were also not usually available locally, so Amazon (and a few others) have become the place to find them. As they move to e-editions, I've moved my purchases there as well (Kindle or otherwise). Not just for any savings (money or carbon), but due to the limited storage space of my bookshelves (which have had more than one purge in a lifetime, resulting in thousands of books hitting the used market .... often followed by a repurchase of the same years later; none of which helped support the author).
As to cost of purchases - I have kept track (and publish the list on my blog) and of hundreds of books purchased this year on Kindle, my average cost is just over a dollar per volume ($1.04 to $1.09), even including the occasional $9.99 volume.
Karen
booksontheknob.blogspot.com
You plant trees. Trees capture CO2 and transform it into cellulose. You chop those trees and make paper. You use the paper to build books. Books are conserved for decades in storage.
Their CO2 balance is strongly negative.
Books are probably the most efficient way known to man to reduce CO2 in the atmosphere.
They might not be the best form a land conservation or biodiversity point of view, but as far as CO2 goes, even a kindle made of air would be worse.
However, it would appear that the report is wrong, and using a Kindle instead of single-use paper books emits more CO2:
One of the problems with such reports are the assumptions about CO2. This report is proprietary, so facts/assumptions cannot be checked. From the quote above-- "a Kindle produces 168 kilograms of carbon dioxide compared to 7.46 kilograms for a book". Hernys doesn't buy it, though he doesn't include the energy for paper production, transportation, etc. It's very difficult to get figures for paper production-- often cutting down a tree for paper is equated to land use change from cutting down a forest for cropland (a paper tree is considered a lost forest rather than renewable crop). A better analysis I found gives about 1.1 kg-CO2/kg-paper (.3 kg-C/kg/paper). A book is typically less than 1 kg (e.g. "Green IT for Dummies", obtained from a library, is .7kg), so this report seems to be about 10X off. We don't know how the figure of 168 kg-CO2/Kindle was derived. It could be way off also.
By point of comparison, a desktop computer might consume 1 kg-CO2/day from the electricity alone, so turning off the computer and reading a book that you bought while walking around downtown is even darker green.
One of the areas I save a TON of money is on my subscription to the Chicago Tribune. I pay $9.99 a month for the Kindle version. Home delivery where I live would be $4.75 a week. That's a $127 a year savings.
When you factor in the savings not only on the purchase price of the product itself, but also the time and fuel if you go to the store to get it, or the shipping costs if you order online, you save a lot more than you think. Even if you get free shipping, it's normally of the 5-7 business day variety, which doesn't do you a lot of good when you need a new book to read right then. :)
I know that I read more than most people do, so it really makes sense for me. If you only read one book every other month or so, it's really not worth it in terms of making up the cost of the device. With my reading habits, though, my Kindle 2 will be paid off within the first year of ownership.
As for buying more books, yes, it's true I buy more from Amazon - the 9.99 bestseller price is no doubt hurting local bookstores and discount clubs/stores the most, as that is where you save quite a bit of money and time. Not to mention the saved carbon emissions from fewer trips across town for the purchase. There are, however, still too many books not available in any e-format (although that is rapidly declining), thus the purchases that were seen in the first year of Kindle sales didn't change - those hard to find paper books were also not usually available locally, so Amazon (and a few others) have become the place to find them. As they move to e-editions, I've moved my purchases there as well (Kindle or otherwise). Not just for any savings (money or carbon), but due to the limited storage space of my bookshelves (which have had more than one purge in a lifetime, resulting in thousands of books hitting the used market .... often followed by a repurchase of the same years later; none of which helped support the author).
As to cost of purchases - I have kept track (and publish the list on my blog) and of hundreds of books purchased this year on Kindle, my average cost is just over a dollar per volume ($1.04 to $1.09), even including the occasional $9.99 volume.
And for those who argue the carbon sink value of volumes - yes, it's true that BOOKS (as opposed to newsprint and magazines, which were ignored in the study - I suspect a single newspaper subscription would offset the Kindle's carbon in under a year, not to mention the cost savings) do store carbon. They just don't always do it as well as standing trees or houses. The main problem, though, is the cost to produce the paper (not to mention the environmental devastation, which can rival coal strip mining, although at least some of those effects have lessened in recent years in the US .... just as we have starting seeing a huge rise in books produced in China hitting the shelves). And the massive carbon (and physical) costs to distribute the books, from printer to distributors to retail stores (and often back again a few times and with about half ending up hitting a recycling center). All of that disappears with the Kindle (you can't return those electrons and they take essentially nothing to store or distribute). A lot of the price reduction in ebooks, in fact, is due to that decrease in production and distribution costs (even if publishers like to argue otherwise, trying to justify the recent inflated prices they charge, which were forced due to rising costs). An author that retains electronic rights can get 30% of the sales price via Kindle and one analyzed the break even point - about $1.79 versus his paperback sales and under $5 for hardcover. For those with traditional publishers, the break is higher (but they also get more from Amazon to split ... and there are no production costs for the publisher to count on their side before the split with the Author, but it depends on the individual contract how that split occurs; it seems 50/50 is used by some, considerably less by others).
Karen
booksontheknob.blogspot.com
I read the report was happy to find a well-written analysis that integrates many pieces of information that together create a more coherent picture. At the same time I am not that sure about the validity of the findings. The two main issues that bothered me mostly are the calculation of the carbon footprint of a single Kindle and the assumption about the number of e-books the average user is reading.
You're welcome to check out my analysis of the report on our blog - http://ecolibris.blogspot.com/2009/09/new-report-finds-kindle-greener-than.html
Best,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
- by i-arman September 28, 2009 8:53 AM PDT
- What I want to know is this: How much CO2 did this study produce? Not the CO2 produced by that which was studied, but the CO2 produced by the actions of the study. Power consumption, resources used and discarded, manpower used... all that will create more CO2. Since this report will have little effect on the sale of Kindles (or any other product), it was obviously a waste of our precious resources.
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(25 Comments)Now if only we could prove CO2 actually has any effect at all...