Debate of the Day 4: Are electronic reading devices greener than books?

Take the Kindle.  It's electronic.  It's wireless.  You can access more than 100 thousand books, newspapers, and blogs. 

So which is greener?  Reading devices with electronic parts that need to be recharged?  Or books with real paper pages? 

Without looking at energy consumption, I'd have to conclude that electronic reading devices are greener.

Both a book and electronic reading device have a certain energy and raw materials cost for their initial construction, transportation, etc.   After that, the electronic reader basically just requires a bit of energy to download and display new books.  If you're creating a new paper book, once again you've got to cut down trees, assemble the book, and transport it to stores.  That requires a bunch more energy (a lot more than just recharging the electronic reader), and also more raw materials.

First of all, wow.  I hadn't yet taken the time to really read about the Kindle.  It sounds incredible, and I'd love one.  I'd definitely vote for it being Greener to recharge than buying paper-filled books.  I'm wondering about features of it....can you email books to others' Kindles for free (eg. how on iTunes you can 'authorize' your purchase on more than one computer), or are there restrictions?  See this YouTube intro video to the Kindle I posted below, for those who are curious...

I'm all about the electonic reading rather than using books and newspapers. When I think about the number of newspapers and magazines and books printed everyday that will never even get read, it's mind blowing. Even if every ounce of that paper gets recycled, recycling isn't exactly a carbon-neutral process either.

Even with the use of plastics, the need to charge, etc. I can't imagine the lifetime impact of a Kindle (or other e-books, or even just reading newspapers on your laptop) can possibly compare to the energy usage and waste of a lifetime of a actual paper usage.

Totally.  Only problem is that the electronic readers are damn expensive!

I don't know...if I added up my magazine, newspaper, and book expenditures over a 3 year period, I think they'd be dang close...

I really want to see a Kindle so I can objectively compare the experience of reading from one, because I'll admit, I do prefer laying in bed with a book to having a laptop on my lap.

What if you recharged your electric device using a Solar cell? Then I think that would make it more enviro.

What about if you only get books from a library?

 I received the Kindle for Mothers Day.  I had never heard of it and didn't really understand the concept.  But now that I have had it for a couple of weeks, I have to say that I love it.  I don't think I will ever buy another "real" book again.  It is so convenient to use and I can't believe how fast it downloads the books.  I really like the feature where you can adjust the font size.  The Kindle does so much more than I have figured out - mainly because when I am using it, I am reading!  I have shown it to several friends who I am sure will be purchasing one in the near future.  This is definitely the wave of the future - it will save so much in paper and waste - if it had my local newspaper on there, I would subscribe to it rather than having a physical newspaper delivered.  I highly recommend this product to anybody looking for an electronic reading device!

That's very cool!  How does the screen look?  I read that they've tried to make it look like paper.  I definitely do a lot of reading on my laptop but I find it a little hard on the eyes sometimes.

After a lot of reading, I am ready now to see that electronic readers are probably more eco-friendly than books.  I just hate to think that one day books may be antiques!  

So if you want to read books- Don't buy new books to read once and store on a shelf indefinately!  Get books from a library, buy them secondhand, pass them on to a friend when you finish, or donate them to a school when you are done...and try to find books printed on recycled paper that use vegetable inks. :) 

I totally agree with that - I keep a lot of books but I also pass on at least as many as I keep.  I often re-use and refer to books on my shelf (though I confess, I haven't reread Max Weber's Economy & Society since grad school, but I'm KEEPING it! Having read it once makes it a trophy.)

I'm not sold on the Kindle - electronics malfunction.  What happens when they break or unrepairable?  How repairable *are* they?  How recyclable are they? 

You can't dog ear a Kindle, write in the margins, store museum tickets in between the pages, or hand off a book from Kindle to a stranger on a train in Japan.  If I forgot my kindle in the seatback pocket of an airplane, I'd be really upset -- but I can always buy another copy of Khalil Gibran's "The Prophet" at a used store for a buck.  And - Kindle is not art.  There is a certain art to books that doesn't translate to digital media -- and you can't take a Kindle book you've read and dissect it into a collage for an art project (for example).

I've still got a pretty big stack of books on my "to read" shelves, so by the time I get through, maybe Kindle will be more affordable.  I'll keep buying used books.  It's rather impossible to keep me out of bookstores anyway - browsing books online isn't nearly the same experience.

Apparently Amazon is producing a student version of the Kindle to target colleges/universities.  The textbook industry is a $5.5 billion annual market and, while most publishers offer electronic versions of their textbooks, who wants to read them online?  Amazon wants the Kindle to fill that niche. Read more here.

I think this is such a good idea.  While some people do save/recycle/give away used text books, I think a lot of them end up thrown away (if not immediately, then after 10 years or so when you realize you're never going to read Darwin's Origin of the Species again...).  This could be a really great alternative, especially if they offer subsidies through universities to purchase them.