Environment

Author Maureen Johnson has set up a fundraiser to help earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan.

GalleyCat has more: “Author Maureen Johnson has launched an online fundraiser for Shelterbox, collecting money for earthquake and tsunami relief in Japan. Johnson led a similar fundraiser for earthquake victims in New Zealand, raising more than $15,000 last week.”

With the money raised, Shelterbox will provide boxes with materials needed for people to restart their lives. Johnson’s website explains more: “The boxes always include a top-quality tent, and they usually include stoves, blankets, water purification systems, and tools. This is true, life-saving stuff, hand-delivered by volunteers trained in survival techniques.”

Follow this link to donate in the UK and this link to donate everywhere else in the world.

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Environmental blog Treehugger has a blog post today called “7 Major Ways We’re Digitizing Our World, And 3 Reasons We Still Want Hardcopies,” which breaks down the battle between digital and print. In the post, the environmental blog argues that people who own eReaders read more than non-owners, but it also points out that you have to read a lot of eBooks to make this an environmentally friendly decision.

According to Treehugger: “While e-books are great for replacing paper books, the most recent calculations estimate that people need to read at least 100 books a year on their e-readers to break even with books on environmental impact. And there’s of course the end-of-life issue of the device — it’s a lot more difficult to recycle an e-reader than a paper book.”

As we adopt our new eReaders it is worth reading a lot of books on them and holding on to them for a few years to make it actually better for the environment than printing paper.

Are eBooks environmentally friendly or are they worse than their print counterparts?

Raz Godelnik, co-founder and CEO of Eco-Libris, has a new article in the Independent Book Publishers Association‘s (IBPA) monthly journal called “Is E-Reading Really Greener?” positing this very question.

According to the piece, eBook devices can be very bad for the environment. Godelnik writes: “Consumer electronics are notorious for containing a variety of toxic materials. Some companies are more transparent than others and make it relatively clear that their e-reader devices are free of toxic materials. But e-readers are something of an unknown variable.”

And as new eReaders populate the market, the old ones are filling up landfills. While companies like Apple and Amazon have recycling programs, not everyone uses them. Godelnik points out in his article, “according to the EPA, Americans generated about 3 million tons of electronic waste in 2007. Out of all that waste, only 13.6 percent was recycled. The rest ended up in landfills or incinerators, even though, as the Electronic TakeBack Coalition explains, the hazardous chemicals in them can leach out of landfills into groundwater and streams.”

But eReaders aren’t entirely bad for the environment. If you read enough books on the same reader, they start to become better for the environment. In terms of carbon footprint alone, “the iPad becomes a more environmental friendly alternative option for book reading once its user reads the 18th book on it.” And according to the piece, “one e-reader does as much environmental damage as 40 – 50 print-on-paper books.” So eBook people looking to be environmentally friendly should really just keep on reading.