Last September we raised a question about e-books that nobody else seemed to be asking: when comparing the impact of supposedly “green” e-books to tree-killing paper books, why isn’t anybody talking about the health and environmental price? (See Getting Rid of E-Trash? Dump it on Asia’s Poor.)

At last someone has picked up that ball.  Daniel Goleman, author of Ecological Intelligence, and Gregory Norris, who is developing a life-cycle assessment software system, have evaluated the comparable impact of e-readers to printed books in an op-ed article in the New York Times. “To find the answer,” they write, “we turned to life-cycle assessment, which evaluates the ecological impact of any product, at every stage of its existence, from the first tree cut down for paper to the day that hardcover decomposes in the dump. With this method, we can determine the greenest way to read.”

It may come as a surprise to digital evangelists that their tree-saving e-gadgets are doing more harm than the traditional reading device known as the book. By some criteria, far more harm.

Goleman and Norris used 6 factors to assess the comparable impacts and their conclusions can be summarized as follows:

• Materials “One e-reader requires the extraction of 33 pounds of minerals…[and requires] 79 gallons of water. A book made with recycled paper consumes about two-thirds of a pound of minerals…[and] just 2 gallons of water.”
• Manufacture An e-reader consumes 100 kilowatt hours of fossil fuels that throw off 66 pounds of carbon dioxide, compared to 2 kwh and less than 1 pound of greenhouse gases.
• Health “The adverse health impacts from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those from making a single book.”
• Transportation “You’d need to drive to a store 300 miles away to create the equivalent in toxic impacts on health of making one e-reader — but you might do that and more if you drive to the mall every time you buy a new book.”
• Reading “If you like to read a book in bed at night for an hour or two, the light bulb will use more energy than it takes to charge an e-reader, which has a highly energy-efficient screen. But if you read in daylight, the advantage tips to a book.”
• Disposal For very different reasons e-readers and printed books end up tied in this category.

The final (and shocking) tally? “With respect to fossil fuels, water use and mineral consumption, the impact of one e-reader payback equals roughly 40 to 50 books. When it comes to global warming, though, it’s 100 books; with human health consequences, it’s somewhere in between.”

For details read How Green Is My iPad?

Richard Curtis

Every Blogger owes a debt of gratitude to newspapers and magazines. This posting relies on original research and reporting performed by the New York Times.