Is the Smell of Print Books Worth the Hype?

By Abby Russo Communications Intern

The following blog was written by one of our Summer 2017 interns. For more information about our internships, visit our internship page here.

When e-readers first became all the rage in the early 2000s, I admit, I was unconvinced that they were worthwhile. After all, print books have been working just fine for a while now, thank you very much. Nearly a decade later, however, I’ve been converted. Now I read almost as many e-books as I do print books, and it’s hard to say if one is better. Of course, I support reading in any format, but I have a hunch that using an e-reader might be greener than buying printed books. 

At first glance, the production of print books appears more wasteful than the use of an e-reader. The publishing industry uses over 100 million trees harvested for the paper and tons of water annually for printing. In fact, the publishing industry accounts for 11 percent of freshwater consumed by industrial nations. The distribution of print books also creates carbon pollution through the consumption of fossil fuels for transportation. If for whatever reason the books go unsold, they are then transferred back to the publishing house where they are incinerated--yikes!--or thrown in landfills. 

While the production of e-readers requires far fewer trees, they present different threats to the environment. The production of an e-reader requires the extraction of 33 pounds of minerals with some ethically questionable sources, such as coltan mined from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The circuitry within e-readers also contains carcinogenic materials like nitrogen and sulphur oxides, both of which are associated with chronic respiratory illness--also yikes! Even though the use of e-readers prevents the purchase of print books, the publishing industry cannot accurately predict their use, and as a result prints an excess of books to be disposed of when they go unsold. 

E-readers become more eco-friendly than printed books  if they are used frequently enough that the carbon footprint from their production would be less than the carbon footprint of the production of print books. The carbon footprint from the production of a printed book is about 7.5 kilograms compared to the carbon footprint from the production of an e-reader which is closer to 168 kilograms. After 22 e-books, however, the numbers break even, and after 44 e-books, the environmental impact is halved.

As it turns out, the answer to whether e-readers or print books are more eco-friendly is more nuanced and complex then I expected and depends largely on their use, manufacture, and disposal. For example, if you don’t read between 22 and 23 e-books on an e-reader, your carbon footprint becomes greater than if you had read only print books. Likewise, the time of day when you read can also have a great effect on which option is greener. If you read mostly at night, the electricity used to power a light uses more fossil fuels than the energy used to charge an e-reader. If you read mostly during the day using natural light, printed books become more eco-friendly. Understanding your reading habits is crucial to making the greener choice. 

The general consensus appears to be that regardless of your choice, there is still some amount of environmental harm to account for, which suggests that maybe I’m asking the wrong question. Maybe we should be thinking about how to reduce the environmental impact of producing books instead of choosing between the lesser of two evils. Maybe we should ask about how we can power the publishing industry using clean energy and materials less harmful to the environment and to human health. Of that much, I’m definitely convinced. 

Some articles I referenced: 

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