A study recently released by the San Francisco-based Cleantech group sought to determine the environmental impact of replacing your books with the Amazon Kindle. See their findings after the jump ...
The study by Cleantech, as summarized by The New York Times, suggests that "on average, the carbon emitted over the life of the device is offset after just one year's use." The study goes on to say that one Kindle will displace the purchase of 22.5 physical books.
The report asserts that printed books have a very high per-unit carbon footprint once you take into account the fossil fuels required for delivery and the surprising fact that up to 36% of those books are returned to the publisher where they are incinerated, thrown away or sometimes, recycled.
The bottom line? The life-cycle analysis of the Kindle suggests significant environmental advantages over published books, magazines and newspapers.
Cleantech Study via the New York Times
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And how many of us only have 22 books? Yeh, the kindle is great, but some of us like our personal libraries.
Every eye dr. I've ever known has said that constant screen reading like that is bad for your eyes.
Also, books smell better and are safer to read in the bath.
Kindles aren't bad as long as you don't mind Amazon deleting whatever they feel like.
"And how many of us have only 22 books?"
That's exactly the point. The more books you have, the better it is. I have a Sony Reader and have over 500 books for it, many of them free public domain books. I would NOT have the space in my home to store that many physical books. An ebook reader lets me buy/keep as may books as I want without having to deal with producing/shipping/having a gas-guzzling home big enough to store them all.
I keep a spreadsheet of dollars spent versus books read to track my cost per read. The public domain freebies and library books subsidize the cost of the readers and purchased books. I am at about $7 per book right now and can get it down to about $3 per book if I finish every book on my reader before I buy anything else.
"Books smell better"
No, they don't :) Especially mass-market paperbacks, which get musty and moldy after a time.
"...are safer to read in the bath"
Nope :) I can put my Sony in a ziploc bag and read it, one-handed, in the bath, on the beach etc. You can't put a paper book in plastic because how will you turn the pages?
Other benefits:
Many magazines I read (including professional journals) have some or all of the articles on-line. I can save the article, download it to my device and not have to clutter up my home with magazines.
I can also put documents I use for work on it. And recipes. And notes. Anything, really :)
Personally, I'm still not sold on e-readers yet. I'm a huge book worm and don't actually mind reading a book on screen…
But with books, I buy many of them second hand from garage sales and second hand shops. With a digital copy, second hand copies wouldn't be possible.
Also, I enjoy introducing books and authors to friends, and will lend out my copy for them to borrow. (If you start a person down the path with even one Neil Gaiman novel, I've found they're pretty much instantly hooked…) If all I "own" is a digital copy, I couldn't do that.
Not to mention, my old paperback copy of 1984 is still tucked safely on my shelf… Amazon hasn't broken into my house yet and arbitrarily taken it back as of yet…
Then again, perhaps I'm biased. My bookcases are probably my favourite thing in my house. They'd look pretty bland if all they housed was a Kindle.
I love having bookshelves with books, and collect vintage out-of-print books I like, English translations of Russian novels to lend out to friends, and all sorts of art and reference books. Anything that I would pick up and flip through again and again, and the more artwork/photography in it the better chances it has of ending up on my reference bookshelf.
However, for novel-reading I use my eBook (Rocket eBook, not the Kindle, but similar device, mine is just older). I've had it for over 6 years now, and I've lost count of all the novels I've read on it! It's a wonderful device. I carry it with me to work to read at lunchtime, I even take it with me to the beach, where I have an entire library at my fingertips and can read whatever I happen to be in the mood for. And I can read in bed without annoying my husband with a lamp light. :) Most novels I may only read once - so there is no point buying a paper copy to collect dust on a shelf! If it's such a favourite that I want to share it with others, that's when I buy a paper copy (usually from a used bookstore). Plus, I'm in Australia, and the eBook is my only way of reading in Russian, my native language - by downloading Russian books.
As for the eyes - after 6 years of reading on the Rocket eBook, my eyes feel no more eye-strain than they would while reading a paper book in normal light. It is uncomfortable to read on a computer screen, but the brightness of the eBook is pretty similar to reflected light from paper. My eyes don't have any complaints, even after hours of reading on the eBook screen.
I splurge on art books. For visual stuff, I like to have it in my hands, see the colors and full-size pages. And now that kindle is available as an iphone app, if I absolutely have to buy a for-reading book (and not borrow it) then I will just do it via iphone. Save me some shelf space.