We’ve been hearing about the death of print media for years.  Magazines and newspapers are finding it more and more difficult to survive in a mostly electronic world and while sales in books has remained largely the same (although some studies have shown steady growth for many retailers but that could be attributed to Barnes and Noble, Borders and online retailer Amazon having more than just books in their inventory).  This could, however, change as eBook readers such as the most popular model on the market, the Amazon Kindle, become more and more mainstream.  It will certainly be at least a few years before eBooks match or exceed the sales of books as kinks are still being worked out with the reader devices and also because some people just like having good ol’ fashioned books around.  It is certainly a different experience in both use and display.

Some folks believe that the popularization of devices such as the Kindle could save millions of trees each year and that could very well be the case.  Printing books requires massive amounts of trees to be cut, especially for popular books by popular authors that require millions of copies printed on their first run alone.  The last Harry Potter book, for example, sold 11 million copies in the first 24 hours of release.  For an approximately 750-page book, that is a lot of trees being cut down for sales in a single day.  Of course, a percentage of that will be made up of recycled paper but still, that is a massive amount of paper being consumed, not to mention the energy cost of doing the printing.

The impact of downloading an eBook to a reader is probably minimal.  The Kindle’s environmental impact will come from the manufacturing of the device itself, mostly the lithium-polymer battery and the plastics that go into making the chassis.  The longevity of the device is both the advantage and disadvantage in this case.  These materials will be made and will not degrade for a long time, most likely ending up in landfills.   However, if it lasts a long time and is not constantly replaced, then the impact is lessened since it is divided over a long period of time.  In order for a Kindle or any other reading device to be a greener solution to print books, it has to be kept and used for a long period of time.  Otherwise, the plastics will last in landfills a whole lot longer than a few hundred pages of paper.

I don’t have any exact numbers but I thought this would be an interesting case for readers who enjoy picking up a good book.  Personally, I think that printing books using a higher percentage of recycled material (at or close to 100%) and finding more energy efficient ways to print is a more solid solution to environmental problems than electronic readers.  Print has more room for error as paper can be recycled easily and at the rate that technology moves in our modern world, who knows how long a eBook reader will stay in the user’s hands.  They’ll probably be ditched for the latest model every few years…or even months!

The other way would be to simply keep eBooks on our laptops.  A number of colleges and universities have gone with entirely online course information so that students don’t have to purchase armloads of heavy textbooks that they’ll most likely only use for a year.

Thoughts?