Reading What? (part two)

This article, "Books Without Batteries: The Negative Impacts of Technology" by Bill Henderson, is something of a plug for his new book, "Book Love." Here Henderson explores the cents and sense of the E-reader debate with regards to the ecological impact this technology promises. (continued from part one)

Some think that the e-reader will save trees. Soon, according to a recent New York Times article, we will possess over 100 million e-readers. What a savings in our forests, right? Wrong.

Here’s what an e-reader is: a battery-operated slab, about a pound, one-half inch think, perhaps with an aluminum border, rubberized back, plastic, metal, silicon, a bit of gold, plus rare metals such as columbite-tantalite (Google it) ripped from the earth, often in war-torn Africa. To make one e-reader requires 33 pounds of minerals, plus 79 gallons of water to refine the minerals and produce the battery and printed writing. The production of other e-reading devices such as cellphones, iPads, and whatever new gizmo will pop up in the years ahead is similar. “The adverse health impacts [on the general public] from making one e-reader are estimated to be 70 times greater than those for making a single book,” says the Times.

Then you figure that the 100million e-readers will be outmoded in short order, to be replaced by 100 million new and improved devices in the years ahead that will likewise be replaced by new models ad infinitum, and you realize an environmental disaster is at hand. We will have lost a chunk of our planet as we lose our minds to the digital juggernaut.

Here’s what it takes to make a book, which, if it is any good, will be shared by many readers and preserved and appreciated in personal, public, and university libraries that survive the gigantic digital book burning: recycled paper, a dash of minerals, and two gallons of water. Batteries not necessary. If trees are harvested, they can be replanted.

I co-edited Book Love – a collection of observations on writing, reading, and the tradition of printed and bound books – for those who still love books. Books are our history and our future. If they survive, we will, too. Books, readers, writers – on this tripod we keep the faith.

Book Love, edited by James Charlton and Bill Henderson is out from Pushcart Press on April 23, the International Day of the Book.



Check out Part 3 in the days ahead for some of my own brief thoughts about this subject.