Thanks for the article!

I agree whole heatedly with your argument against electronics, and I appreciate your comment, I do believe that both sides should be investigated.

The creation of a book is far from a ‘green’ process in itself:
“over 28,000 gallons of water are used (mostly in bleaching) to produce one ton of paper. When this water is released, it can only be treated so well, and many contaminants are released into the environment” -epa report on paper mills

It begins with logging, some which is less damaging than others (managed vs. clear-cut), but both require tremendous amounts of energy (usually in the form of diesel fuel) to cut and transport the logs.

Then there are Paper mills, which have devastating effects on aquatic life, flooding rivers and streams with toxins such as Dioxide, Chlorine, Sulfuric/Sulfurous Acid, Ammonia, Lead, Cyanide and more (ask anyone who has lived near a paper mill, its quite noxious).

Then it moves to printing, where the majority of printers use petrochemical solvents as a base to the ink. The books undergo a binding process (more chemicals, toxic glues, etc).

Next its distribution. All of these incredibly heavy materials must be shipped all over the world, and in the case of newspapers and some periodicals, this happens on a daily basis.

That being said, it’s really a lose-lose situation, but in some cases electronic items, such as the kindle, are more green than it’s hard copy cousin the book.

Paper is recyclable. Forests are renewable resources. There is a carbon footprint to newspapers and books, true, but so too is there a carbon footprint to the manufacture of electronic gadgets, such as Kindle.

In my opinion, the Green aspects of Kindle are overrated. Ultimately, a Kindle reader or its ilk will have to be sold to every student, every recreational reader and used often. By contrast, a library book is sold to several hundred institutions and shared by many. As odd as it is to consider, libraries are greener in the sense that the resources are few but the use is many.

Kindle devices, like other gadgets, are constructed of the same petro-chemicals that are heralded as so wasteful in plastic drinking bottles. Inside that device is a battery containing highly toxic ingredients, which doesn’t even begin to take into account that the device has to be recharged until the product wears out or becomes obsolete. A book, by contrast, never requires another ounce of drawdown on the electric (coal powered) grid once it has left the publisher’s warehouse. A print publication does not contain toxic parts, and it is even possible to use biodegradable, soy-based inks. A conventional book, magazine or newspaper will not end up in a Third World electronic scrap yard where children pick over the parts in search of something to resell. Books are not carcinogenic, whereas the components in many of our circuit boards are, not to mention the IQ diminishing effects of the lead content. A small child could rip up a newspaper and shove it into his or her mouth and you won’t have to call poison control. It ought to tell you something about how “green” a gadget is when you know that the innards of the device would be very, very harmful if ingested. Do you know, for example, that you are supposed to wash your hands after handling a batter, even a button cell that is designated for your watch? That is because these things are toxic. And that doesn’t even begin to account for the circuitry inside the device itself.

I think we forget that carbon footprints don’t constitute the entire environmental equation. We have to ask whether what we are consuming is biodegradable. We have to consider whether a company will have to sell several billion widgets to equip every school child or reader around the world vs. 6 million copies of a book that will be shared, library style, by many individuals.

Paper production has its environmental costs but by in large that ends when the product is complete. For many of our electronic gadgets, the life of the product has only just begun when it lands on a store shelf. From the point you buy the product onward, it will rely on our overtaxed electric grids, and it will eventually be replaced, upgraded and discarded just as inexpensively and frequently as some people replace and upgrade their cell phones. Remember back when each household had one land line and the production of telephones was limited to pay phones, business environments and a single line into a single-family household? Now we have a huge carbon footprint just associated with cell phones alone, not to mention the toxic by products and the petro-chemical drain of all those plastics. The consume-and-discard mentality is what keeps the American economy afloat, but the challenge of going Green is too use everything more wisely, which is to say buy less, share more, and opt for nontoxic and biodegradable options whenever possible.

We need to round out our view of what “Green” really means. To conceptualize Green merely in terms of a carbon footprint is convenient, but ultimately dangerous.