Ebooks Vs Books Environment

A single e reader s total carbon footprint is approximately 168kg and for a book this figure is somewhere in the range of 7 5kg.

Ebooks vs books environment. The carbon footprint when producing an ebook is of approximately of 168 kg of co2 while a traditional books just 7 5 kg average depends on the size of the book number of pages. It takes about seven gallons to produce the average printed book while e publishing companies can create a digital book with less than two cups of water. Therefore in order to amortize the carbon footprint of the ebook we must read at least 22 or 23 books.

The more ebooks read on a single e reader the greater the potential offset vs. The waste of energy water and paper caused by pulping so many books must be considerable by. The book s length and type can lead this figure to vary.

1 using an average of 7 5kg we can conclude it would take reading about 22 23 books on an e reader to reach a level in which the environmental impact is the same as if those books had been read in print.