Quote:
Originally Posted by Robertb
Dear All:
My two cents is based on the COST to obey environmental constraints. ALL paper for hardcover and paperback books is bleached paper... giving it that white we prize. That bleaching releases what is known as PaperMill Sludge. PaperMill sludge contains 32 known carcinogens and so far cannot be remedied. You cannot burn it, bury it, or crush it to where it will not get into the groundwater. You can only contain it and containment, so far, is a disaster.
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THAT is why the clock is ticking on paperbacks and hard covers. The sun is just rising on the Dawn of the eBook!!
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The environmental costs of creating, using, and disposing of electronic gizmos that get replaced every two years is not anywhere close to zero. And ebooks themselves require physical storage with a relatively short half-life, and infrastructure to move them about.
Don't get me wrong, I like my gizmos, but this problem has not been solved by a long shot, it is a far more complicated problem to recycle electronic gizmos, reduce raw material usage to a sustainable level, and it is far from clear to me that we are making significant progress in doing so. So I question the assumption that 'ebooks are eco-friendly'. But I'd like my reading to be as guilt free as possible, so by all means I'd like to see such claims supported by evidence!
By contrast I can easily imagine printed books that we could compost and grow vegetables in (if not eat for dinner), or recycle to make new books. Actually that has probably already been demonstrated, but such practices are not in wide use yet.
The environmental costs will never be zero in any case. Short of giving up books completely, we need to make progress on as many fronts as possible. And maybe stop publishing all crappy books in any form whatsoever...
