Amazon Kindle 2 clears its carbon footprint in 1 year

The book business is huge worldwide, and in the United States alone the industry harvests 125 million trees to meet the needs of its readers. For a long time, paper was the only really good option for reading longer works, but now e-readers like the Amazon Kindle 2 provide another way to read without the eyestrain of a backlit screen.

That’s a good thing, because cutting down trees is only the beginning when it comes to publishing books. Processing the wood into paper, printing on it and transporting it all add to the expenditure of energy and exhaust of carbon into the atmosphere. A new study by Cleantech claims that each purchase of an e-reader like the Kindle 2 could “displace the purchase of 22.5 physical books.”

Right now sales of e-book readers like Amazon’s Kindle 2 and Sony’s Digital Reader reached 1 million so the impact of carbon savings isn’t significant yet. In the first quarter of 2009 e-book readers accounted for about $114 million in sales compared to $24.3 billion in the traditional book industry. The sales of e-books are growing fast too – 154.8 percent by the end of April compared to a loss of 4 percent in the traditional book industry.

Adoption of the Kindle 2 and other e-readers depends largely on the price of entry, content selection, and pricing of content. Amazon recently dropped the price of the Kindle 2 to $299, but that’s still a hefty price to swallow for someone who’s used to dropping $8 for the latest paperback. Even after a consumer buys a Kindle 2, the device is only as good as its content selection and right now many publishers are hesitant about making their books available. Then there are use restrictions on some titles where text-to-voice is disabled, or Amazon can pull back something you’ve already purchased if it chooses to.

Once publishers and consumers find a common ground on the price paid for usage granted then the e-reader space has potential to rise quickly in popularity. Until then, borrowing a book from a neighbor or heading to a public library are good alternatives to reduce your carbon footprint.