Comments on: P-books: Earth-menacing polluters—compared to e-books?

By: walt crawford

walt crawford — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 16:04:35 +0000

John, re the first question you posed: Even cursory research (the kind I did) shows that the paper used for book production can’t be more than about one-half of one percent of all paper usage–the worldwide total for books is about 2/3 of one percent of paper usage for just the U.S. and Europe.

As you say in another way, books represent a very high-value use for relatively small amounts of paper.

By: John Mark Ockerbloom

John Mark Ockerbloom — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 21:53:24 +0000

I wasn’t so much trying to compare the relative energy consumption of p-books vs.ebooks so much as suggest that either way, the energy cost is probably down in the noise compared to other things that consume natural resources. In other words, reading books has high intellectual and cultural benefit, and relatively low cost in terms of natural resources, so it’s not worth worrying a whole lot about, relatively speaking. (And you can lower it further on the print side by making judicous use of libraries and used books, increasing the readership of each book produced.)

That’s why my point of comparison was the *idle* power consumption of computer systems, not the active consumption. Idle consumption provides a much lower benefit (since you’re not actually using the system when it’s idle) for comparable cost. So for those of us who use computers and worry about energy consumption, it’s worth paying attention to first, especially if a few simple steps, like better idle practices and settings (or as the Google article linked above suggests, better power adapters) make a significant difference.

But if someone wants to challenge this or other conventional wisdom, I just need to see some reliable and relevant numbers. Those are often scarcer than they should be. The linked article about the Keppler study, for instance, didn’t call into question the role of CO2 from human activity in global warming; rather, it claimed that trees were not as much of an offset at some thought, due to larger than expected outputs of methane from trees. (And the authors of the Keppler study quickly went on the record to say their findings were misinterpreted in the popular press; see http://www.mpg.de/english/illustrationsDocumentation/documentation/pressReleases/2006/pressRelease200601131/

for a press release from them.)

By: Huw Thomas

Huw Thomas — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 16:50:56 +0000

A more interesting figure would be kWh per reading experience, not per book. A copy that’s read by 2 people has a better cost-benefit ratio than a copy that’s read by 1.

Thinking about it, the average readers-per-book ratio might actually be lower than 1, given that unsold books are returned from retailers to be pulped/recycled (I understand that a typical returns figure is 40%). A significant chunk of that 4.5kWh would, I suspect, go on trucking and pulping.

When comparing with ebooks, we should consider the impact of making, shipping, powering and disposing of the reader devices. Batteries in particular, with their limited life, are a concern. The very pace of technological change is of concern too, because there’s always the temptation to toss an obsolete device into landfill.

kWh per book is also relevant to print-on-demand. If the day ever comes when highstreet bookshops have a POD machine in the basement that can manufacture books according to local demand, many of the environmental costs of shipping and pulping will be avoided.

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 02:42:23 +0000

Of interest to John Mark Ockerbloom and Cerebus: news that Google is pushing for lower power consumption in computers. - David

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 02:35:34 +0000

Many thanks for your thoughtful analysis, John. Here’s my reply. Aren’t you very likely going to be leaving on your system for other purposes besides reading—anyway? And increasingly, aren’t people likely to be running LCDs rather than CRTs? I’d also note that as e-book-friendly tablets get better, more and more people will be reading from them.

As for the percentage of solid waste for which books are responsible, I doubt it’s that high. But it may add up.

Meanwhile, separately, a polite reader writes with a link to a story arguing against the global warming theory. He says: “Earth science is complex. And most eco-demagoguery excludes the roles, naturally arising phenomena like sunspots, methane-plumes and gravitational field flux play in regular eco-cycles. Don’t be an ass, David. Be informed before you outgas, adding info-pollution to a ‘tough’ subject.”

Of course, this contradicts the conclusions that leading scientific groups have reached. I’d welcome further thoughts from readers regardless of their views.

Thanks,
David

P.S. Cerebus, I appreciated your reply as well (somewhat in the vein of John’s).

By: Cerebus

Cerebus — Sun, 15 Oct 2006 02:30:14 +0000

Ask a power engineer: off-peak power demand is rising across the board. This is pretty much all attributable to devices that never actually turn off. You hit the power button and the thing goes into “standby” mode–which is still consuming power. All these things in standby–your TV, computers, TV decoders, TiVos, etc.–can easily eat up to half of your home’s daily power consumption.

By: John Mark Ockerbloom

John Mark Ockerbloom — Sat, 14 Oct 2006 22:57:58 +0000

I’d also like to see how what proportion of the paper stream goes into making books vs. other products. We have a lot of books, but I’d guess that we’ve gone through many, many times more volume of “disposable” paper of various kinds– mail, flyers, office use, packaging, newspapers, diapers, tissues, etc,– and it’s not as if we try to use more than we need to. Unless there are some hard numbers that say otherwise, my intuition is that books are a relatively minor part of the papaer stream, and have a much higher benefit-to-cost ratio than many other things one might be environmentally concerned about.

(One possible thing many of us can address: If your computer system draws 150 watts when idle– which it can if you run a compute-intensive screen saver or other idle processs, and keep a bunch of peripherals on– leaving it on all day consumes 3.6 kWH, almost as much as what’s claimed above for a book. Being smart about power-saver modes, and turning off anything that uses more than a small amount of idle power when you don’t need it, can potentially save a fair bit of CO2 over time.)