In the duel between paper books and e-books, I prefer the more environmentally-friendly option. While it’s true that e-readers enjoyed a meteoric rise when they were launched, things have started to slow down over the last year. This is the finding of a study carried out by The Publishers Association, the UK’s trade association for publishers of books, newspapers and electronic content. The study shows that sales of e-books fell by 16% in 2016 in the UK, while sales of paper books rose by 7% over the same period. The same is true of the United States, where the Association of American Publishers reported an 18.7% drop in e-book sales, while paper book sales rose by 7.5%.

As well as the practical argument of being able to take your library with you wherever you go, the ecological argument has often been used, but we might well wonder why sales of e-books have fallen so sharply, and above all whether this ecological argument was or still is valid. Paper book or e-book, who wins the ecological battle?

The impact of the e-book on sustainable development

In contrast to its Anglo-Saxon counterparts, digital publishing in France grew significantly in 2016. According to the Syndicat National de l’Édition, digital publishing grew by 29.7% year-on-year. This performance needs to be put into perspective, however, because academic, professional and school content alone accounts for 83% of digital publishing, and e-books in general only represent 8.65% of production, according to the publishers’ union.

The main ecological argument in favour of e-book production is based on the fact that the supply of books on dematerialised media does not require trees to be cut down for paper production. What’s more, paper production has a considerable environmental cost if we also consider the emissions caused by transporting the wood to the processing plants, as well as the energy cost of running these plants. If we add to this the energy costs associated with printing, it all adds up to a huge expenditure of resources. When you consider that, according to Greenpeace, it takes 2 to 3 tonnes of wood to make one tonne of conventional paper, you quickly realise the importance of publishing on a medium that does not require this entire production chain. The e-book requires no paper and no printing, so these resources are saved.
If, in addition to the energy saved, there are the environmental costs associated with distribution, such as going to a bookshop or having a book delivered to your home, there is also reason to qualify the eco-responsibility of e-books.

Even if the medium is dematerialised, publishing digital content and distributing it has an energy cost. Using the internet, the main distribution channel for digital content, has an environmental impact. Ademe reveals that search engine queries alone account for 9.9 kg of CO2 per Internet user per year.
Going all-digital also means higher electricity consumption. According to the Clicking Clean report published by Greenpeace on 10 January 2017, the IT sector now accounts for 7% of global electricity consumption.

Server requests generate pollution, because each request puts a strain on the server, which, like any computer, emits energy and heat, to which must be added the impact of the cooling services needed to keep the servers running efficiently. These servers, which are supposed to be reducing ecological costs through dematerialisation, are sometimes powered by fossil fuels.

Added to this is the impact on sustainable development of the manufacture of e-readers. The manufacture of an e-reader involves 33 pounds, or around 15 kg of minerals according to NYTIMES, some of which are toxic. The process of manufacturing an e-reader consumes around 100 kilowatt hours of fossil fuels and produces more than 65 pounds of carbon dioxide (one of the gases responsible for climate change). In addition to the cost of transporting these e-readers and their use, it has to be said that they have a definite impact on the environment.
This is a clear indication of the impact of digital technology on sustainable development, even if this impact needs to be qualified in the case of e-books, firstly because e-books alone do not represent all the environmental emissions of digital technology, and secondly because on a global scale, it should be added that many other sectors pollute in addition to the digital sector.

Paper books, increasingly eco-responsible

While it is true that paper production requires a great deal in terms of sustainable development, particularly in terms of cutting down trees, more and more paper manufacturers are opting for recycled paper, obtaining certification from various labels such as FSC or PEFC for sustainable paper use. You can see the words “recycled paper” on more and more publications. This is also a selling point for publishers offering paper versions of their books.

Unfortunately, despite these efforts, paper books still account for a significant proportion of emissions. A study by BASIC (Bureau d’Analyse Sociétale pour une Information Citoyenne) shows the harmful environmental impact of publishing in France. In its words: “A commercial logic that increases waste”. Short-term profitability as a sales model encourages overproduction and generates waste. Still according to the study, 1 book in 4 is destroyed without ever having been read. This is where the real impact of paper lies – in waste and overprinting. Paper is often the victim of false claims.

The same BASIC study indicates that, unfortunately, none of the alternatives – recycled paper, which accounts for 85% of production today, or electronic reading devices – have a significant impact on publishing.

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