How many books do you have to read to make e-readers more environmentally better than paper books?

Re: How many books do you have to read to make e-readers more environmentally better than paper book

This is an interesting question.

Personally the impact of books on the environment (i would guess) is much slighter than the impact on the reduction of Newspapers and magazines!

I can envision a world where we own copies of books that we love, read the throw aways on the e-readers, but perhaps most importantly, get the content of our papers in a good format. (Good for reading) Our local paper is down to almost nothing. Question is, would they have more content if they didn't publish a paper edition?

The Seattle PI has gone that way with mixed success.

 

Re: How many books do you have to read to make e-readers more environmentally better than paper book

Our local library (Sacramento County Libraries) already "loan" out digital e-books. You have to download a special reader to view them with because of DRM - there are 3 different formats, Adobe and two other similar formats.

I am tempted, but I don't like to install anything from Adobe, so I think I will still continue to borrow old style books for a while longer.

 

Re: How many books do you have to read to make e-readers more environmentally better than paper book

Using any eBook reader is a plus to the environment; either via paper, weight, or space. As an RVer, it's particularly a weight and space issue; guess that holds true in life, also. Using a Kindle and iTouch or iPhone, you have several items to read the same book from using one account. Books either free or purchased from Amazon can be read on any of these, and the book even syncs to the page you left off when you use one of the other items to read from. Is that awesome, or what?
Do we read as much now as in the past? I think I'm doing better now, and especially like it that "the classics" are free downloads. The education of the masses is a boost to the environment; intelligence and common sense can only help.
eBooks for school folks is nothing short of a must. Those books sure are heavy; and college books are expensive and out of date after one semester. What happens to them? Landfill - recycle? I think eBooks are definately a must in the future; as are hybrid vehicles and wind and solar generated energy.:hippie::hippie:

 

Re: How many books do you have to read to make e-readers more environmentally better than paper book

This is a surprisingly difficult question. In part, it depends on how fast you read. Let me try to calculate energy consumption per hour, in reading a book once and tossing it.

Here's a cut at it.

1) Energy per sheet.

The data for paper are all over the place, but I'll take this value as reasonable: 17 watt-hours for an 8.5x11 sheet of copier paper, virgin materials, or 12 recycled, here:

http://eetd.lbl.gov/paper/ideas/html/issues.htm

No clue how good that estimate is, but let me run with that.

Quick check for plausibility: A pack of copier paper is 500 sheets. By this estimate, from virgin materials, that embodies 8.5 KWH (500*17/1000) of energy. At 10 cents a KWH, that's 85 cents worth of energy. Pack of paper retails for a few bucks. Energy isn't the only cost but it's a large fraction of the cost of making paper.

So that seems plausible. Or at least, not outlandish.

2 Reading speed.

Average person reads around 200 words/minute.

3 Words per sheet, single spaced.

Single-spaced, 10 pitch font, couple of texts, I come up with around 750 words per 8.5x11 page, or 1500 per double sided printed page. Maybe as high as 1000/page 2000 for double sided.

Ah, round it all up, call it 1600/sheet, divided by 200 words per minute, = 8 minutes of reading, front and back of one 8.5x11 sheet, single space, 10 pitch type.

So that's 7.5 sheets/hour at 200 words per minute.

4 Energy consumption per hour for printed books.

OK, that means that if you read a book at toss it, using these data, you consume 17 WH/sheet x 7.5 sheets = about 130 WH per hour.

So, reading a book once and tossing it is like burning a 130 watt incandescent for the time that you are reading.

Holy moly. Could that be even approximately correct?

And, if you read faster, you burn brighter -- go through more paper per hour.

Now, if the comparison is a library, you'd need to know the typical number of times a book gets lent. Good luck finding data on that. But the point is, if a book will have 100 readers, then the energy cost of the paper book is 1/100th that. Whereas every reader will incur the cost of running the Kindle.


5 Wrapup.

OK, so the Kindle claims 7 days battery life out of a battery that weighs maybe an ounce and a half. That's obviously vastly less than the 130 watt incandescent bulb.

So, if you're going to buy a book and read it once (or a few times), it sure looks to me like the Kindle is a winner, and in a major way.

If you're going to borrow from a library, it all depends on how many people are going to read that book over its lifetime. If it's in the hundreds, I'm guessing that the energy consumption is going to be close to that of a Kindle.

For my part, I can't believe that the energy cost of the materials, even for the battery (which tends to be energy intensive, and will need frequent replacement, from what I've seen) will come anywhere close to the energy cost of reading privately-purchased books that are not frequently reread.

In other words, my impression is that the Kindle uses substantially less energy for privately-purchased reading material. Particularly if you're a fast reader.

6) Carbon storage.

I have to bring this one up, since my wife owns lots (and lots and lots) of books. Surely more than a ton, probably less than 3 tons. So we get credit for long-term carbon storage that we wouldn't get with a Kindle.