Louisa Pearson: 'Beyond 100 books your e-reader becomes more environmentally friendly'

Published on Thursday 26 August 2010 11:39

The first time I heard the word "quagmire" was from my O-grade history teacher, Mr Forrester. He was telling us about the fighting in Abyssinia during the Second World War.

I did memorise the facts for my exams but alas, now, all I can recall is something to do with tanks getting stuck in mud. I must apologise. None the less, a quagmire is exactly what I'm sitting in now. A metaphorical one, you understand.

It started with one of those conversations about iPads. "Why would you bother with actual books when you can just download them?" says he. I paused for a moment, wondering if I should have taken a little longer than nine years of courting before agreeing to marry him. Can a man who prefers an electronic book over the touch, smell and look of a real one ever really be trusted? While mulling this over, I looked around my living room, trying to imagine what it would look like without books. Probably a lot tidier, but that's not the point.

I can report that lots of people feel the same as me. Without real books, "life would be miserable", said one Facebook friend. "The batteries don't run out on books," said another. My next stop was the website Eco Libris (www.ecolibris.net - it urges you to plant a tree for every book you buy) which has links to what looks like every article ever written on the subject.

The Independent Book Publishers Association magazine highlights the importance of doing a life cycle analysis of print and digital books rather than just comparing carbon footprints, and so considers toxic waste (some e-readers use PVC and contain brominated flame retardants), recycling (Amazon and Apple have programmes in place), energy use (including the fact that e-readers are used to access the internet which itself relies on vast data centres) and working conditions of the people who manufacture them.

One assessment in the New York Times estimated the "break even point" in terms of the carbon footprint of print and digital books is 100 books.

So old-fashioned books win until you go beyond 100 titles, at which point your fancy machine starts becoming more environmentally friendly. The same report stated that with respect to fossil fuels, water use and mineral consumption, one e-reader has as much impact as 40 to 50 paper books.

Going back to the IBPA article, the assessment of carbon footprints found the iPad to be more eco-friendly once you get beyond 17.4 books. You see what I mean about a quagmire? The short version of all this seems to be that various people with more know-how than myself have given the comparison process their best shot, but come up with some rather variable results.

I think we could say that if you're a voracious reader who isn't going to replace your e-reader every six months then your electronic book habit might not be so much worse for the planet than a real book habit.Someone out there is reading this on their iPad and saying: "Well, at least I'm saving trees."

I am saying, you can replant trees. I'm also saying that, regardless of scientific analysis, nothing compares to picking up an old Ladybird book and seeing "Louisa" scrawled on the inside front page in felt tip pen.

This article was first published in Scotland On Sunday on Sunday, 5 September, 2010