Through stories of encounters between humans and animals, Our Wild Calling offers a way out of an age of solitude. We speak to author Richard Louv.
What is the most sustainable way of reading a book?
Both printed and digital books have an environmental impact. Let’s find out what the greenest way of reading is.
Reading is magic: through books you are thrown into another world, another time and even another body. “At the age of 70, those who don’t read will have led only one life: their own! Those who read will have lived 5000 lives: they were there when Cain killed Abel, when Renzo married Lucia and when Leopardi admired the infinite… because literature is backwards immortality”, wrote Umberto Eco.
The environmental impact of books
But books have an environmental impact on the Planet, too, either if they are printed or electronic books. So, let’s try to understand what the most sustainable reading option is. In the first place, we have to assess the environmental impacts of paper books and e-books.
One could think that the former are more harmful to the environment because trees are cut down to produce them. But even when reading e-books on our computer, tablet, smartphone or e-reader we can damage the environment.
The most ecological choices
We should take into account the whole life cycle of a book and assess every phase of its existence. E-books, as many technological devices, are produced with minerals, non-renewable sources and toxic substances; we should also consider that to manufacture an e-book a large amount of electricity is wasted and packaging, transport, the energy consumed while using the device and the disposal of the product are harmful to our Planet.
According to the New York Times the materials use to produce an e-reader equals at least fifty printed books. While the Book Industry Environmental Council (Biec) is more optimistic as it claims that the increasingly use of e-readers will reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent by 2020 and 80 percent by 2050.
On the other hand, to produce a traditional paper book 27 kg of CO2 are emitted into the atmosphere and 24 trees are cut down. Fortunately, publishers are increasingly committing themselves to use recycled or Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) paper, which ensures that the raw materials used during the manufacturing process are respectful of forests.
According to a study carried out in 2009, e-books have a greater impact than printed books, but when a considerable amount of paper books is collected, the impact of the latter balances that of the former. In conclusion, what is the most sustainable way of reading?
The secret is buying as little books as possible, either printed or electronic. The greenest way of reading is borrowing books from libraries, share them with friends and give away those that one doesn’t read anymore. Sharing, one of the most common words in the social network era, is what libraries have always been based on.
Siamo anche su WhatsApp. Segui il canale ufficiale LifeGate per restare aggiornata, aggiornato sulle ultime notizie e sulle nostre attività.
Quest'opera è distribuita con Licenza Creative Commons Attribuzione - Non commerciale - Non opere derivate 4.0 Internazionale.
The 10 best books about the environment, to change your perspective on the world around us and on our role in the global ecosystem.
Svetlana Alexievich has been awarded the 2015 Nobel Prize in Literature by the Swedish Academy “for her polyphonic writings, a monument to suffering and courage in our time”. The Belarusian writer and journalist is known for books that weave hundreds of real life testimonies together. Alexievich was born in Ukraine in 1948 from a
After more than 5 years from the environmental disaster of the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, on 20 April 2010, Gulf of Mexico, the British Petroleum (BP) agreed to pay a penalty of 18.7 billion dollars in order to end once for all the legal action the United States and other federal states took after the worst
Il Paese africano ha bruciato oltre una tonnellata di zanne e corni confiscati per esprimere la tolleranza zero per il bracconaggio.
He has already invested 1 billion dollars in tens of projects and innovative realities for the development of renewables all over the world. Maybe not all investments had the success and outcomes desired, but they have certainly been money well spent, since they set a guideline within the energy industry. With this in mind, the world’s richest man,
Una nuova ricerca ha dimostrato che il contatto con la natura inibisce la formazione di pensieri negativi che possono sfociare in gravi patologie come la depressione.
People are increasingly committing themselves to protect one of the Planet’s most important pollinators: bees. And in Norway they are creating a green corridor exactly for them.
100,000 lives were lost in the Sahel region of Africa between 1972 and 1984 due to a long lasting drought and the famine it caused. A recent scientific study shows that global warming has more recently increased rainfall in the area, temporarily relieving it from drought. This has led many, such as Forbes contributor James