Paper vs. paperless: Which makes reading greener?

Are e-books like the Kindle (left) and Sony Reader (right) more eco-friendly than paper books? The short answer is that we don't know -- yet. We have a pretty good idea of the carbon footprint of paper books, thanks to a newish study, Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry, released earlier this year by the Book Industry Study Group and the Green Press Initiative. That report concludes each paper U.S. book releases 8.85 pounds of carbon dioxide.

Unfortunately, the study doesn't cover e-books. "In order to address e-books effectively, I’d need to look at a lifecycle comparison that analyzes the impacts of e-readers vs. paper as a medium," said Tyson Miller, founder and director of the Green Press Initiative, in an interview published on Sustainablog. "I do hope that we can explore much more in-depth in future iterations."

The lack of studies effectively comparing the carbon footprint of paper vs. electronic books hasn't stopped the e-book industry from marketing both e-books and e-readers as eco-friendly products. There's even a Read an E-book Week, which appears to have been started by a couple of e-book writers, who claim on their website that "E-Books Can Help Reduce Your Carbon Footprint."

Sony, too, has been pushing its Sony Reader (right) as an eco-product. In an interview with the Sietch Blog, Rick Clancy, senior vice president for Corporate Communications at Sony, recently recommended the Sony Reader thusly: "Think of all the trees that can be spared if more people read e-books. Another great feature is that the Sony Reader uses very little energy. My understanding is the device can go through about 1,000 page turns without needing to be recharged."

To actually measure the carbon footprint of an e-book, however, would require doing a lifecycle analysis of the e-reader -- including its production methods, materials used, energy required for the reader's use, and recyclability. A future study will likely come up with a ballpark average figure, but variables will remain depending on how one obtains and uses the product (Is the reader charging up the book via solar power or coal power? Will readers discard and buy new e-readers as often as they do cellphones or computers?).

And beyond the paper book to e-book comparison, there's the reading habit comparisons for both. For instance, someone who only reads paper books -- but mostly borrows the books from the library which she gets to by bicycle (that's me) -- will have a vastly different reading carbon footprint than someone who drives their Hummer to the bookstore and buys books printed on virgin paper.

But what all of this got me thinking about is whether people would even use e-books for the same purposes that they do paper books. A while back, I wondered whether or not Google Docs would actually make offices more eco-friendly (I'd gotten an e-mail from a Google person touting Google Docs as eco) since it's unclear how the carbon footprint of "traditional" paper use compares to that of going paperless.

I posed this question to Jamais Cascio, futurist of the Cheeseburger Footprint fame, who said "I guess that the question can only be answered by looking at what you're doing with paper & paperless, and just how fungible the two really are." More on that and a review of the Sony Reader next.

Comments

[Steve P.]

I'm one of the founders of the largest independent ebook retailer in the USA, Fictionwise Inc.

Any lifecycle analysis of ebooks versus print books must also include transportation of the book to the customer, as well as emmissions from physical brick and mortar book stores (in proportion to the percentage of books sold online vs. from physical stores).

Fictionwise, for example, delivers millions of ebooks to our customers each year using only 4 web servers. The energy cost of our four servers is probably less than just the lighting costs of a single B&N superstore. If you do some back-of-the-envelope calculations,
Fictionwise's carbon emissions from delivering books from these servers is something like a hundredth of a pound per book. Contrast that to the cost of shipping books either to brick and mortar bookstores or by mail to consumers. It's hard to find precise figures because shipping is complicated, but from some quick google research it looks to me like shipping a 1 pound book halfway across the country by truck releases several hundred times as much carbon as the per-ebook cost of running our web servers 24x7.

Another factor is storage. Warehouses consume electricity and land and thus have carbon impact. eBooks require no storage.

In addition, Fictionwise and most other ebook retail operations I know of are green in other ways. For example, 75% of our employees work from home full time, and even most of the rest work from home at least a day or two per week. This saves the employees the hassles of commuting as well as gas and wear and tear on their cars, and obviously also greatly reduces Fictionwise's overall footprint.

Another factor when doing lifecycle analysis that is often overlooked is that most ebooks are now read on handheld devices that consumers have bought for other reasons. Most of our customers read on Palm, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, etc. In the case of a dedicated ebook reading device like Sony or Kindle, yes you can attribute 100% of the manufacturing pollution to the ebooks consumed when comparing. But in the case of a device the consumer already owns and primarily uses for other purposes, only a fraction of the manufacturing pollution should be counted against the ebook side of the ledger.

So all this is to say, this is a complicated calculation indeed. I would be happy to assist qualified researchers answer this question by providing data from Fictionwise.

I do believe that once a proper analysis is done taking all these factors into account, it will be a slam dunk that ebooks are by far greener than print books.

[m]

One item I also see neglected in this post are used bookstores! Used bookstores are usually filled with books that lasted much longer than most electronic toys and to some people are infinitely more interesting than staring at another screen. I honestly don't know how long any sort of e-book reader lasts, but if it is like most electronic equipment, I wouldn't expect it to be used more than 5 years at most. This would probably be more true if someone carries the e-book reader with any regularity as it would be more subject to wear and tear. Dropping a regular book is not going to destroy it. I don't want to see some e-book readers after equivalent tumbles.

One would also be living in a very blissful world if they did not acknowledge the relatively prohibitive cost of purchasing an e-reader and e-books opposed to visiting the local library, paid for by taxes and open to anyone who can give proof of residence. It seems like to fully compare the costs of these services, you would have to consider that every single person needs some sort of mobile electronic device available in their possession to get the same library access as what is currently in place.

[KateNonymous]

m, I wish there were used bookstores near me, but I haven't lived close to one in over 10 years, and two states ago. Owning a used bookstore is my dream job, but I don't know how viable they are these days.

[Quirts]

Some data from an avid e-book reader: I've been reading e-books for pleasure since 2001. Thanks to the online account I have at fictionwise's ereader site and my kindle account I know that I've read 52 books in 7 years. (I'm a slow reader, what can I say?) As pointed out by another commentor, since 46 of those books were read on a Palm device which I used for other purposes as well as for reading, not all of my energy usage or device replacement schedule can be attributed to the e-reading function. (I had 2 Palm devices over 10 years) Now I'm reading on a Kindle. (Palm couldn't keep up with my other needs and the iPhone doesn't yet have an off-line book reader, but I dream...) I'm impressed with the energy efficiency of the Kindle. I don't plug it in but once every couple weeks.

Hands down, I wouldn't read for pleasure if it were not for e-books. For me, the portability, ease of shopping for content (ie, not going to a bookstore or awaiting a delivery from an online purchase), the ability to carry many books in the same light, small format where ever I go has made all the difference for me. And when I read on the Palm, the ability to read in the dark (and thus not keep my spouse awake as I read late into the night) was the key to my adopting e-books as my preferred mode of reading. Now I use a small LED booklight to illuminate my Kindle (which works better than on a paper book because it is more stable).

Is my reading format choice more green. I hope so - If only because of the avoidance of vehicle miles traveled. I don't drive to the bookstore, I don't drive to the library. I don't drive to the used bookstore to sell my books or to the thrift store to donate them. I intend to keep my reading device for a very long time - as long as it holds out and content is available. I don't ever see going back to paper.

[Lauren]

I was just pondering this same issue two days ago. While the verdict isn't out, I enjoyed reading about the pros and cons, as well as the comments.

Thanks!

[Marc]

An Associate Editor at the scientific journal Environmental Science and Technology wrote about the relative environmental impacts of e-books and paper books. She considers paper manufacturing, electricity generation, e-waste, and more. The article glances over some important points and is a little wishy-washy at the end (which is probably necessary given the complexity of life-cycle analysis), but it's still worth a look.

[Jeff]

In addition to the reduced use of space by ebooks for stores and libraries, is the reduced space required in peoples homes. A large portion of my home space is used to store paper books which then requires energy for heating and cooling. When I can replace most of my paper books with ebooks I could move to a smaller home and save on energy costs. Ebooks will also save on the energy costs of moving from the larger home to the smaller home because they have less weight, just the ebook reader and some backup storage.

[Erika]

I'm the writer of the article in Environmental Science and Technology that was mentioned above. I noticed the link to the story does not work. Here's the correct link:
http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2008/may/tech/ee_ebooks.html

It is difficult to be definitive about comparing paper books versus e-books, as noted above, but not for the reasons people some people might think. There's a fair amount of data from life cycle analyses now, which I discuss in the article, but in the end one has to make some value judgments regarding whether environmental impacts in one area (such as the use of toxic chemicals in manufacturing electronics) are "worse" than other impacts, such as greenhouse gas emissions that lead to global warming. There are always tradeoffs, although taking everything into account I have come down on the side of e-books for the average reader.