Recycling Update: Strategies for Closing Berkeley's Budget Gap

E-books vs. Print Books: Which is Greener?

[Photo by Andrew Mason]

I recently downloaded my first e-book. It was fast, painless, and in seconds there I was, reading the book right off my computer screen. I didn't even have to leave my home. For many years, futurists have been predicting a paperless society. Are we almost there? And is this where we want to be?

The Ecology Center has been a bookseller for several decades. In the last few years, we have begun to notice a cultural shift in reading habits, as more people turn to e-books and away from printed books. We have wondered about the impact of this shift. At this point in time, which is the environmentally preferable choice: electronic or printed books? How many e-books must you read on your e-reader to equal the environmental impact of a printed book?

When it comes to comparative life cycle analyses of books and e-readers, there are conflicting answers. According to Bob Schildgen, the Sierra Club's Mr. Green, "unless you're a fast and furious reader, the energy required to manufacture and then dispose of an e-reader is probably greater than what's needed to make a traditional book." He figures that you would need to read 40 books or more on your e-reader for it to make environmental sense. "We must consider not only the trees needed to make paper versus the manufacturing of electronics products, but the shipping costs, fuel, and ultimately, the energy needed to recycle these materials at the end of their days. Not to mention, what ultimately happens to e-waste? Where do the non-recyclable remains end up?"

A study by the San Francisco-based Cleantech group and reported in the New York Times claims the amount of greenhouse gases emitted by e-readers is offset at 22.5 books. The study concludes that "purchasing three e-books per month for four years produces roughly 168 kilograms of CO2 throughout the Kindle's lifecycle, compared to the estimated 1,074 kilograms of CO2 produced by the same number of printed books." The study takes into account the fuel needed to deliver physical books to the bookstore and back to the publisher if unsold. Ultimately, 25 - 36% of books are returned to the publisher, who in turn either recycles or disposes of them.

A report from the Green Press Initiative puts the number somewhere in between, at 32.4 e-books for the greenhouse gas equivalent of a printed book. However, the GPI study points out that "greenhouse gas emissions are not the only environmental impacts of producing E-readers or printed books. Printed books require wood fiber, which needs to be harvested from forests (or plantations that replaced natural forests) while e-readers require plastic (derived from oil) metal and glass as well as other mineral resources to make up the various electronic components and battery." When you add in human health impacts resulting from exposure to toxins during the manufacture and disposal of electronic devices the offset number is closer to 70 books. 

In an article for PBS's MediaShift, Don Carli points out that the energy costs of digital media and "cloud-based" alternatives to print are driving record levels of energy consumption. Data centers in the Eastern U.S. use significant amounts of energy from coal-fired power plants, and much of that coal comes from mountaintop removal. "If you thought you were saving forests and protecting the environment by going paperless...think again. The real dilemma you face is that you may be doing more to cause environmental degradation and deforestation by going paperless than you think, and making responsible choices requires informed decisions and rational tradeoffs." Dr. Jonathon Koomey, a project scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, debates Carli's premise: "Information technology has beneficial environmental effects that vastly outweigh the direct environmental impact of the electricity that it consumes."

Because of the Internet's distributed nature, it's difficult to assess how much energy is used by its various parts. We do know that home computers and monitors consume less power than they did a decade ago, and that data centers and telecom infrastructure are using less each year due to gains in efficiency. The ratio of home energy use to infrastructure use is about even at this point. According to Dr. Koomey, "the energy efficiency of computation has doubled about every 1.6 years since 1945 with remarkable constancy," and we can expect this trend to continue. Large Internet gear providers and data center providers like Cisco and Google are pursuing energy efficiency as a way to lower energy bills for themselves and their clients. Google-designed data centers use about half the energy of a typical data center.

In the end, it gets down to usage factors. If you already own a tablet or an e-reader, the additional environmental impact of reading an e-book is small and gets less for each book you download. If you are comparing devices sheerly from the point of view of energy consumption while you read, multi-function tablets like the iPad (which has a backlit LCD screen) consume more energy that e-readers like the Kindle (which has an E Ink display). An iPad promises 10 hours of battery life, while a Kindle can go a week without charging. The Kindle's E Ink display consumes power only when the page is turned. An LCD display uses 40 - 60 percent of the device's overall power consumption.

Print books, of course, have a different set of environmental impacts. The production of paper involves deforestation, the release of harmful chemical pollutants like dioxin, and problems related to disposal. Paper accounts for nearly 40% of the waste stream, and when paper degrades in a landfill, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas emission more potent than carbon dioxide. However, books can be read with natural sunlight and are much more easily recycled than e-waste. Nowadays, many books are manufactured with recycled or FSC-certified paper, which reduces their environmental footprint considerably. Recycled paper requires 44% less energy to produce, emits 38% fewer greenhouse gas emissions, and conserves up to 24 mature trees per ton of recycled fiber. And if you choose to share your books with friends, you can effectively halve or quarter your book's carbon footprint with no additional energy.

So, while the lifecycle analyses of books and e-readers vary, enough data exists to guide you toward more thoughtful consumer choices. In the future, the Ecology Center intends to offer a selection of e-books for sale on our website to accommodate the growing number of readers who are now using e-readers. A portion of the sales will benefit the Ecology Center. In the meantime, if you don't have an e-reader or tablet, don't feel like you have to jump on the bandwagon. We still sell plenty of old-fashioned books at our store. Members of the Ecology Center get a 20% discount on books. Whatever you do, stay informed and keep reading!

Suggested Actions to Green Your Reading

1. Share and Reuse Your Books.

Share your books with friends and borrow books from the library. Donate used books to the library. Sell or donate your used books to used booksellers.

2. Choose Independent Booksellers.

Buy print books from local, independent bookstores, like the Ecology Center or Mrs. Dalloway's. Books Inc. is a local, independent bookstore that also sells e-books. Click here for all the reasons to buy from local businesses.

3. Consider Your Reading Habits.

Buy an e-reader or tablet if you read lots of books, particularly those you would probably read only once. If you are not an avid reader, a multi-function device (eg. Android or iPad) might make more sense than a single-function device (eg. Kindle, Kobo, Nook). If you don't download many e-books, you can still use the device for its other functions.

4. Opt for the Best Power Source.

The best option for powering your e-reader is to get your power from renewable sources rather than fossil fuel sources. A few ways to do this include: installing solar panels on your home, charging your devices using a solar charger, or opting in to your utility's green power program. PG&E has no such program, but other regional utilities do. 

5. Choose Print for Rough & Tumble Use.

Buy print books where an electronic device might be too fragile or likely to get soiled or damaged by dirt, gravy, slobber, sand, etc. (eg. books for young children, gardening or construction books, cookbooks)

6. Dispose of Books and E-Readers Properly.

When a paperback book is tattered and stained, place it in your mixed paper recycling cart. Hardcover books can also be recycled, but you'll need to drop them off at a collection center. Try these places listed on the Stopwaste.org website.

Non-working e-readers can be taken to these places. If you are upgrading to a new version of e-reader, sell your old e-reader on craigslist, or donate it to these places. 

7. Use More Energy Efficient Networks to Download E-Books.

If you download e-books, the data will travel over a network to reach your end-user device. Dialup connections use 3.56 kWh per gigabyte of data. Newer technologies including fiber and power lines use .77 kWh/GB, while cable uses .72 kWh/GB. DSL is the energy efficiency winner here, at a low .17 kWh per gigabyte of data.

California Olive Growing and Pressing at Yolo Bulb 

Katie H. Michel, our Farmers' Market Operations Manager, visited Yolo Bulb to interview Mike Madison, our newest olive oil vendor at the Tuesday South Berkeley Farmers' Market. Click here to sign up for our Ecology Center Farmers' Market Newsletter. 

When Mike Madison decided to plant an orchard on his 22-acre property near Winters, he set forth three requirements for his tree crops: that they have minimal pest problems, low water needs, and that they not require bees. After some thought, he decided that olive trees were the best fit given his terms. Since planting a 7.5-acre orchard of mixed olive varieties in 1991, olive oil has become a main output of his small, organic farm, where he also produces cut flowers, melons, and a variety of tree fruit destined for his wife's jams.

Known as "Yolo Bulb," Madison's farm is located in the topsoil-rich Lower Putah Creek watershed, an ideal area for growing tree crops. Madison has a deep connection to this region, having grown up on his family's small farm right across the creek from his current home. I got a chance to visit Yolo Bulb in mid-April, soon after he joined the South Berkeley Farmers' Market. Spring is an "in-between" time for many growers as they wait for the right weather and soil conditions to work their fields and begin planting. As Madison said, "These soils in the valley-when they're too dry you can't work them, when they're too wet you can't work them, so there's just a little window of time you can work your fields. And it usually lasts for about 45 minutes!"

Just that morning, Madison had taken advantage of one of those brief "45-minute" windows to mow down a cover crop of bell beans in what will soon be one of his flower fields. Though some fruit remained on his olive trees, the harvest was done for the season, and his oil was already processed and stored until next Fall, when the next crop will be ready for picking.

Madison has no formal training in farming. He described the process of creating his farm by saying, "I just made one blunder after another," and he pointed out the sites of his failed forays into grape growing and Clementine production, both crops that have now been torn out. But his breadth of knowledge about plants and the natural world is deeper than his comments betray.

Meet our Newest Board Members 

The Ecology Center recently appointed three new members to the Board of Directors: Robert Huang, Ryan Briscoe Young, and Ladan Sobhani.

Robert has over 30 years of professional experience in environmental, urban and transportation planning which includes: environmental impacts, air and water quality; local and regional planning; promoting mass transit including accessibility for elderly and disabled. He is a board member of a foundation focused on livable communities, urban agriculture and environmental justice; has served on the advisory council of the Bay Area Air Quality Management District; and has taught Tai Chi at Options Recovery in Berkeley.

Ryan joins the Board with legal experience in the areas of law and technology, and climate change policy. While at Hastings College of the Law, he was appointed Development Editor of the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal and was accepted into the Environmental Law Clinic. He currently works at the Greenlining Institute, where he facilitated negotiations between community-based coalition groups and the CEOs of Verizon, PG&E, and AT&T; intervened in regulatory proceeding such as PG&E's and Sempra's Dynamic Pricing proceeding at the California Public Utilities Commission; and designed advocacy and litigation strategies for Greenlining's consumer protection agenda.

Ladan and her husband are the owners of Auto Glass Express, a Berkeley-based business offering quality auto glass services at affordable prices. Prior to joining her husband in the family business, Ladan spent 12 years at non-profit organizations fighting for social and environmental justice, human rights, and peace in the Middle East. Most recently, Ladan worked for two years as Program Manager at Green For All, where she convened national leaders to share best practices on how to green our communities while creating new economic opportunities for low-income and people of color communities. Ladan also worked for 5 years at Global Exchange where she coordinated fact-finding delegations to the Middle East, organized national rallies and educational events against the war in Iraq, and worked to promote a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Ladan also worked for the International Forum on Globalization where she researched the impacts of economic globalization on the environment and local communities. Ladan is also a founding parent at Golestan, a Persian Language and Cultural Center in Berkeley.