oday is World Environment Day 2014, a good time to ask: which is the ‘greener’ reading option – a printed book or an e-version? Has the movement towards e-content shifted the environmental burden from print to electronic, and from the library to the content providers.
The rapid rise of ebooks and e-readers has been phenomenal.
Ebook sales have risen from 10 million in 2008, to 457 million in 2012, and despite slower growth in 2013, account for 20 per cent of all book sales.[1] CILIP estimated that academic ebooks will account for 18 per cent of the global textbook market by 2013, up from 3.4 per cent in 2011.[2]
This expansion has been mirrored by sales of e-readers. Kindle sales are estimated to have increased from 3.6 million in 2011 to almost 12 million in 2013, whilst Apple have reported even more spectacular sales for iPads, with a likely 200 million sold since their introduction in 2010.[3]
Ebooks can provide library users with 24 hour, remote access to content, in a format they appear to be increasingly comfortable with, whilst also potentially offering financial savings to libraries. But what impact is this growth, with its associated benefits, having on the environment, and does it compare favourably with printed books?