How environmentally friendly are books?
Blog
10/13/2020
The search engine of a large online bookseller finds 695 books matching the search term “Greta Thunberg”. Reading about her climate activism is wonderful, but does she approve, we wonder? After all, the printing of all those pages is itself a source of CO2 emissions. We mark the Leipzig Book Fair by asking which factors influence the ecological footprint of books and e-book readers. The answer will help readers to decide how climate-friendly they can make their reading. Carl-Otto Gensch of the Oeko-Institut has done a few calculations.