In the United States, the e-reader market is much more developed than in Europe and e-book sales account for nearly a quarter of sales. At first glance, this “de-materialization” may seem a good thing, making it possible to produce fewer paper books, objects that require cutting down trees, bleaching leaves, producing ink… Nevertheless, digital reading is not fundamentally ecological. What should we think about it?
Paper
book vs. Digital book
The
paper book requires paper, products to bleach this paper, ink, but
also digital machines for its edition, storage of digital copies and
printing. The digital book, for its part, is quite similar to the
paper book upstream of the production of the book object (the
edition) but its distribution is totally different. Distributed
through digital channels (book sales sites, publishers’ websites,
pirate platforms, etc.), it does not involve the production of new
copies: each copy is only a sequence of bits and bytes, and once a
copy has been developed it is easy to duplicate it identically on the
network. It therefore travels at the speed of light, consuming less
energy during this journey than that needed to move a paper copy in a
truck.
Can
digital reading be considered fundamentally ecological? That would be
forgetting the
enormous ecological impact of the Internet infrastructure
(servers, electricity consumed by customers, computer production,
etc.) but also of the
equipment used to read this book.
If it is possible to read a digital book on a computer screen, and
for those who already own a computer it is probably the most
ecological approach, limiting the consumption of electronic equipment
and therefore of the raw materials related to it, this is not the
most pleasant reading experience: reading on a screen is tiring
because the light (LED) is emitted from the bottom of the screen,
before passing through a (transparent) panel on which are the pixels
that make up the display. Depending on the quality of the screen,
visual comfort may vary, but the e-reader offers a totally different
experience: using electronic ink (e-ink) it can work without
backlighting. You can therefore read in the sun, or illuminated by
any light source of your choice. This is what makes this reading
method more comfortable than reading on another type of screen:
computer, telephone or tablet.
Digital
ink also allows the e-reader to operate with very little energy: this
type of screen consumes electricity only when changing pages. This
means that an
e-reader can have several-week autonomy. Ecological? Not necessarily.
You have to produce this e-reader before you can use it.
It requires metals and rare earths, produced in conditions that are
often appalling for nature and for workers in peripheral countries.
In addition to its ecological balance sheet, it is important to take
into account a certain social balance sheet, which is far from being
always positive. It is estimated that you need to read about 100
books on an e-reader to achieve a carbon footprint similar to that of
a paper book.
Moreover,
the risk of data hoarding (collecting digital files without having a
real use for them) is probably amplified with the digital book, which
implies the production and consumption of hard disks, storage space
in a permanently fed “Cloud”… far from being ecological!
However,
a book’s lifespan is at least 10 years (but many books live much
longer!) and most
paper books are given a second life, or even several,
whether at bookstores or on dedicated digital platforms (in France,
second-hand books represent 30% of the book market turnover!). The
e-reader’s lifespan is not necessarily as long. If it could
last longer, it may end up in a drawer: as all digital objects evolve
rapidly, some wealthy consumers may be tempted to buy a new model of
e-reader without any real need. Nevertheless, sometimes
the digital e-reader may break prematurely: the screen on these
devices is often very fragile.
The cost of replacing the screen being prohibitive, some users will
then throw away their device to buy a new one. Yet a repair would be
possible, even if it proves more complicated than that of a
smartphone or computer, where spare parts are plentiful. But are all
e-readers the same on this side? They certainly don’t.
Types
of screens and durability
If
we consider that the screen is the part that most often causes a
premature end for an e-reader, this part should be considered before
deciding on a particular model, especially if the e-reader is going
to be used in a “hostile” environment: in the presence of
small children for example, or regularly transported in a backpack.
Most
e-readers are now equipped with an e-Ink
Carta screen.
This is a very good quality screen, but the colored particles that
make up the electronic ink are deposited on a very
thin glass plate. This glass plate is extremely thin and extremely
fragile.
It can’t stand being bent, and that’s why a shock that bends the
e-reader a little bit can break the screen.
Some
e-readers, such as the Boox Note 2 from Onyx, use a Mobius
type screen instead of a Carta type screen. Being an evolution of
Pearl technology, this screen uses a thin layer of plastic instead of
glass.
If it is possible to usually consider that plastic rhymes with low
quality, for an e-reader screen this may imply a better durability,
considering that the screen is the sensitive part of an e-reader,
limiting its ability to last.
E-Readers’
reparability
E-Readers
of all brands are not easy to repair. Waterproof e-readers are
probably the worst of all, often coated with some kind of glue, right
on the components, to prevent water penetration. Some models (e.g.
Kobo e-readers until 2018) have small SD card readers for internal
storage: this makes it very easy to replace the storage chip (and
thus the operating system) once the e-reader is open. Some use mobile
phone batteries, which are easy to find and change. For the rest, the
electronics are generally quite basic and solid
(low-power processor, RAM, integrated circuit).
But
as said above, the
risk of breakage most of the time comes from the screens, and there
it gets more complicated: they are hard to find, and expensive.
The user is therefore forced to turn in most cases to the vendor, who
will usually be able to repair the e-reader. As an example, repairing
an Inkpad 3 e-reader, which can cost new for about 200 euros, costs
120/130 euros, not including shipping costs. And what is the
recycling rate of the old screen materials? It’s hard to know…
Digital
sociability vs. human paper book ecosystem
A
factor to be taken into account for those interested in the
ecological cost of digital reading is also the human
ecology around the book.
A paper book can be lent to a friend, encourages the use of a library
or bookstore. With the digital book, one can have access to books
that cannot be found in another form (books reissued digitally but
not reissued in paper format, for example, books in other languages
that would be expensive to import physically…) but one finds
oneself retrieving one’s books either directly from the dedicated
application of one’s reader, or on the Internet: it’s only a matter
of time before the book is reissued in digital format.
Reading
itself becomes a matter of files, backups, devices, rather than
paper, with its grain, its specific texture, but also with the places
where this special object that is the book is supplied.
The
e-reader, however, because of its minimalist and reading-oriented
approach, is not a computer or a smartphone: it does not invite to
zap that is characteristic of web browsing, but rather concentration.
This is closer to a paper book than to a tablet…
Sales
channels and related professions are also evolving: algorithms
are replacing booksellers, engineers are replacing material handlers.
The consumption (in electricity and raw materials) of digital
platforms is difficult to calculate, especially since physical books
also exist in digital form with their publishers. Moreover, while
some small publishers have quickly embraced digital book formats and
offer ePub or PDF copies of their books directly on their sites,
sometimes free of charge, the market mainly benefits a few big
players, namely the giant Amazon.
Users’
consumption of books is becoming one of the sources of Big Data,
making it possible to get to know everyone better, their tastes,
preferences and even their reading pace. When we know that the Net
giants’ main business is the resale of user profiles, we can be
worried.
Conclusion:
the digital book, yes
but…
The
digital book is not as white as some merchants would like to pretend.
Nevertheless, opening up to new, less horizontal modes of
distribution, it can also open up other horizons. The main problem
probably remains the production of e-readers, which are often far
from being sufficiently durable or easily repairable, but as we have
seen, it may be interesting to think about this phenomenon in a
broader way, taking into account its impact on society as a whole, on
the book ecosystem and on sociability in the age of the triumph of
digital technology.
Interesting read, thanks!