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Disposable books
posted by Rob on 22 Jul 2008
(somewhat) eco-packaged headphones
I'm starting to notice reviewers of various high-tech goods also giving opinions on the packaging of the gadget in question. Too much? Too wasteful? Or in the case of the all-cardboard packaging in which Sennheiser ships some of its headphones: singled out for praise. And you'll be aware of how far ahead of the UK countries like Switzerland or Germany are when it comes to rules about recycling. Presumably their lead will exert some influence on us to follow. Which brings me to a point I made a while back: how long before someone's eye alights on a paperback bestseller and it dawns on them that this is just cheap, disposable packaging for text that could be delivered in other ways? Some people are already talking about CDs that way: pointing out that pressing millions of shiny disks, putting them in cases, driving them around the country just so that someone can end up with a few extra strings of digits on their iPod is rather wasteful.
Should a decent eReader emerge, that's satisfactory for reading thrillers and romances on, won't the same logic be applied to the millions of novels a year that are read once and then spend uncounted years gathering dust? Lately I've been frightening the life out of myself by looking at predictions of what will happen to our climate if we don't take massive action in the next seven years. Then I take a quick glance at the newspapers and note that none of this action is either underway or really under serious contemplation. Which presumably means we'll see a series of climate-related cataclysms and everyone will suddenly wake up to the drawbacks of a disposable economy. Might massmarket paperbacks be an early casualty of an anti-waste backlash?
Comments: 3
Seems to me that libraries full of books are in fact carbon sinks. They've taken tons of carbon out of the atmosphere in the form of trees, converted it to paper and put it into storage. Complicated business this environmentalism.
CDs on the other hand, which can store hundreds of books, are made from petro-chemicals drilled out of the ground and should be illegal. Easy thing this environmentalism.
M
Posted by: Matthew | July 22, 2008 10:33 AM
Well, as you know, I've already acted upon this. I'm still waiting for an inexpensive and decent ereader myself, but in the meantime 50-100 downloads per day of Mortal Ghost seems very respectable. I've even got readers in Iran and Mongolia!
Posted by: Lee | July 22, 2008 03:02 PM
Rob, in all the discussion vis a vis e-readers I've not yet come across anyone extolling e-readers and i-pods as near perfect disseminators for written and spoken poetry respectively.
Re: M's comment: "Seems to me that libraries full of books are in fact carbon sinks." Durham built a central library as part of a multi-million pound millennium scheme. A year or so after it opened I tried to borrow a copy of Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass. The library didn't have a copy on the shelves - though they had 5 in store. (A university city library without a copy of Walt Whitman!) "We can order it for you," they said."But it will cost you 70 pence." "Why?" I asked. "The van and driver are hustling backwards and forwards to /from store to library anyway. Why should it cost any extra to bring a volume of poetry?" I was being asked to subsidise their inefficiencies and inept stock management. Leaving aside discussion of the arbitrary figure of 70 pence, I would have been content to have paid, say, 50 pence, and downloaded the text onto a reader. I think public libraries could lead a way with greater adoption of e-readers - a smart manufacturer/publisher project team could now be funding pilots.
Posted by: haarland phillipps | July 23, 2008 10:03 AM