Raz Godelnik blogging on the website of the Independent Book Publishers Association asks Is E-Reading Really Greener? We’ve been asking the same question for far too long and it’s good to hear voices other than our own talking about it.

Godelnik’s is an important one.  He’s co-founder and CEO of Eco-Libris, a company working with publishers, authors, bookstores, and book lovers worldwide to promote green practices in our industry.

To determine which format – print or digital – has a smaller carbon footprint, the IBPA applied life cycle analysis “which evaluates the ecological impact of any product, at every stage of its existence—in this case, from cutting down trees for paper to the day when the iPad and the Kindle will end their lives,” writes Godelnik.

One test was revealing, demonstrating “that you need to replace a purchase of at least 100 physical books with 100 books on your e-book (or at least the iPad, the device used for the test) to make the device “a greener option from a carbon footprint standpoint.”

However, as one team of researcher assets, “the carbon footprint is just one part of the comparison. With respect to fossil fuels, water use, and mineral consumption, one e-reader has as much impact as 40–50 print-on-paper books. And with respect to human health consequences, they claim the figure is somewhere between 50 and 100 books.”

There’s one more important criterion to bear in mind as we consider our future choices:  “Someone who (like most Americans) reads only six to seven books a year and switches to a newer e-reader version within three to four years may not be going green.” What happens to your discarded e-reader is something you probably don’t want to know, but you really need to look in faces like that of the child in our picture sitting in a park – a park strewn with all the horrors of civilization.  (See Getting Rid of E-Trash? Dump It on Asia’s Poor and Which Is Greener, E or P? Count to Ten Before Answering)

Read Is E-Reading Really Greener?. And if you’d like to learn – and do – more, visit ecolibris.net.

Richard Curtis