Mike English's blog

As technology advances, many people have started questioning the future of printed books. However, ebook readers like the Amazon Kindle are still trying to catch up to all of the “features” so well established by physical paper books: dog-eared pages, marginalia, sharing, ease of navigation, portability, zero energy consumption, low eye strain, etc. Much of the concern regarding the future of print is associated with environmental concerns over the energy use and waste production by mechanisms of information distribution. Many feel that digitization provides a simple solution avoiding the problems caused by paper production. However, assumptions about the “eco-friendliness” of digitization go largely unexamined.

In the past ten years, two studies (that I know of—please let me know if there are others!) have been conducted to compare the environmental impact of ebook readers and printed books. The first study, released in 2003, was conducted by Greg Kozak, a graduate student at the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Systems. Using the ISO standards for Life Cycle Inventory Analysis (LCA), an emerging standard analysis tool in the field of industrial ecology, he concluded that printed books pose a greater threat to the environment than ebook readers. However, he failed to account for the toxicity of electronic components, the biodegradable and renewable nature of paper, and the planned obsolescence of consumer electronic devices. Cleantech Group produced a similar study with similar findings in 2009, but has not made the report available for public reading (“Cleantech Group report: E-readers a win for carbon emissions” 2009). Therefore, neither LCA is sufficient to justify a large-scale change in the way we store and distribute information.

Here’s a thought experiment: imagine a book that sits on a library shelf for 30 years — you can pick up and read it long over 30 years after it is first printed. Now imagine a computer sitting on a desk for 30 years — after 30 years, computer technology will have advanced so much that a workstation will have gone obsolete several times over. Indeed, the digital information of an ebook may be transferred from one computer to the next with ease, but what about the waste of all the hardware that needs upgrades and replacement along the way? Unlike paper, which is biodegradable, computer hardware is not biodegradable, and it is full of toxic chemicals. With more paper being made from recycled post-consumer material and/or sourced from sustainable pulpwood forests, environmental concerns about modern printed books pales in comparison to the numerous problems with electronic devices.