Are Regular Books Greener Than the Amazon Kindle?

Of course not. But the New York Times publishes the self-evident findings of a redundant survey on the question: Are E-Readers Greener Than Books? That's not a real question. One is basically a downloadable file living on a small computer.  The other is made of dead trees and barrels of ink and printing presses, and it travels on fossil fuel-burning planes and trucks. Next week's question: Is it greener to watch Casablanca or fly to Casablanca?



The study in question points out that the carbon emitted by an e-Reader like the Kindle is "offset after the first year of use." Interesting trivia from the article:

"In 2008, the U.S. book and newspaper industries combined resulted in the harvesting of 125 million trees, not to mention wastewater that was produced or its massive carbon footprint."

And statistical proof of the Kindle's eco-dominance over regular books:

The Cleantech study concluded 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.