Green Daily

Yesterday, I wrote about my frustration with my public library, which is part of a county-wide branch system. Basically, after really trying to make it work and giving it a second chance, I had to break up with it. Lucky me, I was the recipient of a Kindle this Christmas. This was an extravagant gift for me, and definitely a rare one, but I think that "Santa" could not listen to me complain anymore about my woes with the public library.

Oh. My. The Kindle might be the best invention ever. Ok, the startup cost to purchase the reader is high. But once you're over that, there are no monthly fees and books just beam down from the sky straight to your reader, no need to hook it up or sync it with your computer. And the prices are very reasonable per book, anywhere from $5 for older paperbacks to $9.99 for a new hardcover. I expected to miss the feel of paper, but I don't. The Kindle reads like butter.

To the next question. How green is a Kindle? If you are buying books, there is an environmental cost, as each conventional book creates 8.85 pounds of greenhouse gases. There are lots of programs to reuse and swap books, which are great, although unless you find someone on your street to swap with, there will be some emissions due to shipping. Of course, if you can manage it, the public library is probably the greenest, although for many people, they have to drive there and with these sprawling systems now, there is greenhouse emissions for all of the transporting, some of which is going on across very wide distances.

In my opinion, the biggest green challenge with Kindle is going to be the e-waste it generates when it becomes obsolete. You do need to power it, although it doesn't seem to be a big energy-guzzler, I believe because the screen is not backlit. All in all, it would take someone smarter than me to figure this out, like Pablo, but there are certainly pluses and minuses on both sides of the equation.