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Ebooks not greener than print says publisher
November 20, 2009 | 8:47 am
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By Paul Biba
That’s what Karen Christensen says. She’s an academic publisher and author and co-editor of the forthcoming book The Business of Sustainability. According to her:
… the debate around green issues behind producing books had so far largely ignored the “vast” impact of data centres and the computer and mobile communications industry.
“I can’t think of an issue where our beliefs about an issue are more out of line with the realities,” Christensen said, whose book is due out in January.
“Both print and digital publishing have an impact on the environment, and we need to get over the misconception that digital publishing is inherently better than publishing on paper. It might be a lot worse.”
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Comments:
“…… the debate around green issues behind producing books had so far largely ignored the “vast” impact of data centres and the computer and mobile communications industry….”
This is absurd. However ‘vast’ the impact of data centres and the computer and mobile communications industry may or may not be, the portion of that impact due to e-publishing will be completely negligible. In addition, the ongoing high rates of improvement in computation speed and storage density will be available to e-publishing for free as the incentives for improvement do not depend on the existence of e-publishing.
Regards, Don
OK I will bite.
While it is true that much that is printed is a waste of paper, I have never argued that printing books is on paper is major environmental problem (just think of the amount of cardboard used for packing).
However if ebooks plus all the devices needed to read them are taken into account it would not even come close to the environmental impact of book printing enmass. I am heartedly sick of stupidity and Christensen would seem to have given voice to a particularly stupid sentiment.
I am interested in examining any evidence that defies facts and common sense about how reading an ebook on my desktop or laptop computer, or on my iPhone, uses more trees and resources than manufacturing, buying, transporting, storing, shipping, and ultimately disposing of a printed book.
The fact that ebooks are far more environmentally sound than print publications — paper books, newspapers, magazines — is, for the printing industry, a very inconvenient truth.
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks
There is a Swedish study that concludes that reading on an eInk device is much greener, but web-based reading can consume more energy under certain circumstances: http://www.infra.kth.se/fms/pdf/Report_epaper_final.pdf
It is about newspapers rather than books. It does not mention the data centers explicitely but the energy for uploading and downloading is mentioned. It not only considers energy but also e.g. toxicity.
There is a potential for the ebooks to get more sustainable by using green energy, which might be more difficult in the p-industry (for example regarding distribution). There are some plans here in Holland to build data centers next to large greenhouse areas. The greenhouses have an electricity plant that the data center uses and the waste heat from the datacenter will be used to warm up the greenhouses.
I agree that the environmental impact of data centers and the computer industry need to be examined more closely, but lets get real here. Vast data centers are hardly necessary for the ebook market. If we assume that the average person in America bought 2 ebooks a month (I am intentially wildly over estimating, probably by many orders of magnitude), and that the average ebook is approximately 1 megabyte, we are looking at approximately 600 terabytes a month… or about 20 TB a day. That may seem like a lot, but in reality, all the equipment needed to serve up that data could be stored in a few racks in a small room.
Now granted, those computers would use a fair bit of power, and some nasty chemicals are used to produce them. On the flip side however, if we look at the total impact of producing, shipping, storing paper books and of reshipping or destroying unsold books, I find it hard to believe that the paper product is greener or even as green as the electronic version.
Ebooks are, relatively speaking, a low bandwidth low demand product (i.e., even an avid reader is probably not going to read more than 5 or 6 megabytes of books per month). In contrast, music is a relatively low bandwidth but high demand product (i.e., each mp3 file is fairly small, but people could easily purchase and listen to 30 or more in an evening) and video is definitely high demand and high bandwidth.
If we are really worried about making ebooks greener, why not encourage ebook makers to provide solar charging options for their ebooks? Or better yet, build solar cells into the readers (All in all, I can’t imagine their power consumption is significantly larger than a scientific caclculator).
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Bill
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Bill
There is simply no comparison with the economies of scale provided by e-books and printed volumes. The “vast” storage space for e-books, for the entire planet, could be housed in the space of a single chain bookstore. And as usual, print publishers manage to avoid discussions about the resources (including oil and coal) used, air pollution, chemicals and toxic baths dumped into local watersheds, and the total cost of transporting, in producing and selling paper goods.
Yes, electronics can benefit from better and more sustainable power sources (which are right around the corner, some already here). They also need a better recycling stream (though paper’s vaunted recyclability only lasts through 3 processes, and isn’t fully recycled itself). But suggesting e-books are less sustainable than print is being short-sighted. It’s a clear and desperate attempt to ignore the facts in order to maintain the status quo, and no longer worth consideration.
I am being lazy and have chosen to not read the article, but, from the summary, she is suggesting that the number of servers to process orders and “ship” ebooks is amazingly high in comparison to the servers and point-of-sale systems which process paper book orders, track inventory, and run the print shops. As Michael said above, it defies common sense.
I would not be surprised if the cash registers at a single large, chain bookstore alone consumed more resources than all of the servers used by Fictionwise.
Data centers? Give me a break. An eBook might be a meg, maybe two, maximum. That’s a couple of seconds over a DSL line and something like one ten thousandth of one percent of a modern hard drive. Sure, electrons use energy but compared to just about any other electronic medium, books are trivial.
I absolutely agree with Logan that thousands of retail outlets running cash registers, air conditioners, lighting, etc. have got to be a bigger energy drain than a few servers in Fictionwise’s basement. Then there’s the non-trivial issue of life-cycle costing paper books.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a single hit on HuLu or YouTube didn’t use more energy than all the eBooks sold (in any given time period).
I could go on but when you look at paper, it’s not just about the production and first-transportation It’s about driving to bookstores, running bookstores, shipping returns, storing books, moving books (when people move).
Rob Preece
Publisher
Wow, 8 cooments here so far, 9 now and more to come. It would seem that e-readers are better for the Earth and global warming than tree books and tree paper. I agree with everyone here. But there is another factor which you should consider, too, and that is that global warming is set to do a huge massive die-off of human beings in the next 300 to 500 years, culling humankind from 15 billion then to just 200,000 “breeding pairs” who will be living in polar cities in northern regions, and at that time, around 2500 AD, we won’t be worrying about ebooks and the environment. Why? See my predictions here: http://pcillu101.blogspot.com
We must always remember that the world is headed for major disaster in the coming 30 generations. So enjoy your ebooks and your paper books now as much as you can, but future generations will not have this luxurty. Things will be good for another 250 years or so, so ENJOY! But bear in mind: we are headed for major climate chaos. Maybe someone can find a way to store all human knowledge on ebooks for the future, because future gens are going to need instructions.
I am NOT kidding. This issue is the MOST important one facing ALL of us. As a lover of paper books and a new adopter of ebooks, all these posts pro and con books and ebooks is just a sidebar to the real fight ahead of us. Don’t believe me? Read James Lovelock. Our way of life is soon to be over, 30 generations hence. So enjoy it while ye may!
– John Connor, Terminator 2: Judgment Day
Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks
“Nothing is written. The future is ours to shape.”
- Myra Godwin, The Sky Road
–Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
“culling humankind from 15 billion then to just 200,000 “breeding pairs””
Just what we need to evolve into a new species.
One main difference, paper books are (or can be) sustainable because they use a renewable resource. Ebooks cannot say the same.
Of course, that doesn’t mean the publishing industry isn’t very wasteful and inefficient, and there are many ways to improve this.
http://www.selfdestructivebastards.com/2009/10/ebooks-versus-paper.html
Yes, paper is a renewable resource. That does not, in and of itself mean that paper books are a greener technology. Many chemicals are used in the production of the inks and the papers used in books, not to mention the costs of storing and distributing the books (Consider the amount of space dedicated to traditional books, and remember that all of those books could be served from a computer and storage system that would fit in a largish closet.
Also, I am not convinced that plastics cannot be ultimately made from renewable resources. Yes, plastic currently is made with oil, but that is for convenience and cost reasons, not because plastics cannot be made from biological sources. Metals, I will grant, are not renewable, but they can (usually) be readily recycled.
This is just another pathetic attempt by publishers who wants to keep the status quo because it gives them more control over the industry.