According to recent marketing research, only about 20% of European consumers make choices about their shopping habits based on the sustainability of a product. In North America that number is even lower, so we have all long way to go before consumers are truly sustainable. But increasing levels of consumer activism give us reason to believe that we are on the cusp of a major change in consumer attitudes.
Here are some basic green resolutions for consumers worth adopting in 2012:
Buy products with the smallest environmental footprint
Buy second hand
Buy e-books rather than print
Recycle
Turn off the lights
Switch to LEDs
Do not buy bottled water
Turn down the heat
Use public transit or ride a bike
Stop eating red meat
Reduce waste
Harvest rainwater for landscaping
Plant a garden
Compost
© 2012, Richard Matthews. All rights reserved.
Have you read any footprint comparison studies regarding the creation of a tablet vs. printing books? I'd be curious to look at that.
ReplyDeletePS - Red "meat"
Thanks for the comment. Here are some excerpts from an article that addresses your question:
ReplyDeleteThere are carbon emissions in the production of books, not to mention the loss of carbon-gobbling trees felled for paper.
the e-reader [is] bound to be a better choice over the long run.
Experts say: The heart of this dilemma is how to compare the ecological impact of printing books with that using an e-reader, and figure out based on your own reading habits which is a greener option. But doing so isn't always easy.
"There's still not a wide consensus on how to measure the carbon impact related to paper," says Darby Hoover, senior resource specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council. As a general indication, a March 2008 report by the Book Industry Study Group found that the U.S. publishing industry uses more than 1.5 million metric tons of paper each year, and a 2006 figure estimated carbon emissions at 8.85 pounds of carbon dioxide per book.
On the other side of the equation, few e-reader manufacturers disclose the environmental impact of manufacturing and running their devices. Raz Godelnik, co-founder of Eco-Libris (www.ecolibris.net), which promotes the adoption of green practices in the book industry, says, "Apple is the only company being transparent about their devices (the iPad and iPad2)."
From Eco-Libris' analysis of the iPad2, the break-even point at which the device has a lower carbon impact than an equivalent production of print books is 14. A widely cited study by research firm Cleantech Group found that the carbon emitted in the life cycle of an Amazon Kindle is fully offset after the first year of use, as long as the owner downloads more than 22 books in a year, and additional years of use result in net carbon savings equivalent to an average of 168 kilograms of carbon dioxide.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/01/HOCR1M0J6B.DTL#ixzz1jMPEdu7k
Thanks for the response!
ReplyDelete