Could Electronic Gadgets Actually Be Good For The Environment?
January 19th, 2010 | by Eric Readle |What springs to mind when you think about the latest, trendy, electronic gadget? The response will differ from person to person most probably. Some will think that they’re a complete waste of time, others will find them cool. Some might just think that they’re more trouble than they’re worth and there will certainly be many who find them overly complex and difficult to use. However, it’s probably fair to say that the last thing you might associate with such devices would be the fact that they might be good for the environment – if used in the correct manner.
Digital photo frames for example have become very popular over the last two or three years. As a result of fierce competition, prices have reduced considerably and you can now pick up perfectly serviceable digital frames for more or less the same price that you might expect to pay for a traditional photo frame. There are a variety of perceived benefits associated with digital frames, one of these is their capability of displaying hundreds of different photographs using a single frame.
A lot will depend upon how many photographs you take in an average year, but if you are in the habit of getting a bit snap happy then using a digital frame to display your photo collection could have a positive environmental impact. Whether you avoid having photos printed out at a processing lab or if you just print out less on your computer printer you will wind up using fewer materials.
Another good, and very topical, example is the current trendy gadget – the e-book reader. E-book readers have actually been available for quite some time, but they really caught the public imagination in 2009 and now seem poised to increase sales even further in 2010. The Kindle reader is currently the most popular by a long way and Sony have also established a good market presence.
Every year, the U.S. book, magazine and newspaper sector requires 125 million trees to be felled. In addition to the lumber, large amounts of water, chemicals, dyes and energy are also needed to satisfy our reading habits. Further, because books are, of course, a physical product, they require to be shipped from the publishers to the book store – by road usually. It’s also worth noting that the carbon footprint of the average book is doubled when the customer gets in their car, drives to the store, buys their book and then drives home again.
E-books don’t need paper or ink to produce them. Neither are they a physical product – they can be delivered by internet download.
It goes without saying that both digital photo frames and e-book readers are physical products. Therefore they consume both materials and energy during manufacture. They also require to be shipped, either to the retail outlet or direct to the end user. Nevertheless, recent studies have shown that – even taking the materials and energy consumed during the manufacture and delivery of the hardware into account and offsetting these against the savings associated with reduced paper use, lower transport impact etc. – such devices can have a positive environmental impact. It does depend , to some extent, on how many books or how many photos you print every year of course.
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Tags: Ebooks, electronics, environment, environmental issues, Gadget, gadgets, green issues, Technology