If you need a new excuse to pick up one, then you probably just found it they are greener
If you need a new excuse to pick up one, then you probably just found it they are greener
Sometimes, you can get a clever answer even if you ask a stupid question provided of course that you follow up with a smart question.
For instance, if somebody asks you, 'are e-readers greener than printed books' then you will get a 'duh' look. After all, you need to cut down forests for printed books, right?
But the Cleantech Group asked this question and followed it up with a question that quantifies the damage.
'How much' they asked, and their answer is illuminating. In 2008, the US 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, says the report.
Clean stuff
This report was aimed at just one product Amazon's Kindle e-reader but it has implications for all e-readers.
The report says that the carbon emitted in the lifecycle of a Kindle is fully offset after the first year of use, and this is bound to apply for readers from other companies too.
The Cleantech Group also says that e-readers purchased from 2009 to 2012 could prevent 5.3 billion kg of CO2 in 2012, or 9.9 billion kg during the four-year time period. If you are a greenie, news of this sort is bound to warm the cockles of your heart.
Of course, one can look at it from the larger perspective of global warming. A news report from Reuters quotes German renewable energy industry institute IWR as saying that India's emissions of CO2 grew 125 per cent between 1990 and 2008, while China's grew 178 per cent and the US 17 per cent.
Policy matters
The same news report also says that India contributes around 5 per cent to global CO2 emissions. And though India's per capita emissions are one-twentieth of the United States and about one-tenth of Western Europe and Japan, there is still a good chance that we will still be asked to make our contributions to reducing emissions.
While we should no doubt have stringent standards for vehicle emissions, we could also look at another option how about using e-readers in schools to replace paper books? The savings for the government could be enormous, and apart from paper and ink, we could sell the carbon credits to rich countries and make even more money.
Of course, there will be one drawback critics of books can no longer say stuff like, 'This book shouldn't have been printed. It would have saved a lot of nice trees'.
Ah, well. You can't have everything.
QUICK TAKE
>>E-readers could make the planet greener
>>This could have immense benefits for India
>>We could use it to sell carbon credits to rich countries
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Source: Wikipedia; figures are for 2006; emissions are depicted as annual CO2
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