Did you know that the  US book and magazine industry sector was responsible for the felling of 125 million trees in 2008? That's a lot of trees.

The average conventional book has a carbon footprint of 7.5 kg of CO2 during its lifetime. That's assuming that you have it delivered by mail or courier. If you get in your car, drive into the shopping district of town, buy your book and then drive home again, the carbon footprint of your reading material just doubled.

So it should be no surprise to learn that Amazon Kindle is kinder to the environment. Apart from the fact that no paper, ink or water are used in the production of electronic books, the delivery method – download from the Amazon store using 3G wireless technology – is a lot more environmentally friendly.

Of course, it would be wrong to suggest that your Kindle has no environmental impact. Obviously it consumes both materials and energy during the manufacturing process. It also requires electrical power to operate. However, even taking these factors into consideration, your Kindle e-book reader is still much better for the environment than the continued use of traditional printed books, magazines and newspapers.

It is estimated that in 2009, e-book readers will be “carbon neutral” – the CO2 saved by the use of electronic media will almost exactly balance the CO2 used to manufacture and power the devices. Thereafter, as usage increases, the manufacture and operating “cost” will be more than offset by the savings obtained by avoiding the production and distribution of traditional paper based books and magazines.

The graphic above shows the estimated environmental impact of electronic book readers between 2009 to 2012. The red bar shows the CO2 emissions produced as a result of the manufacture and sale of e-book readers. The blue bar shows the CO2 emissions that will be saved as a result of using electronic books rather than the conventional paper type.

As you can see, in 2009 e-book readers are pretty much carbon neutral. The energy and materials used to produce them is counterbalanced by the savings in paper, ink, delivery of traditional books. Thereafter, the blue bar savings start to be quite a bit greater than the "cost" of producing the readers - a positive environmental impact. So the more you use your Kindle instead of buying paper editions, the more environmentally friendly you'll be!

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