It must come as no surprise to you that the print industry (books, newspapers and magazines) has a huge carbon footprint due to the production (cutting down trees for raw material) and distribution. You are already taking a step in the right direction by reading TechTheFuture (hopefully from your laptop or mobile device?
).
But of course there are more rigorous ways to take action. One of them would be to start using an e-reader to replace your paper books! However, like our collegues at Ecogeek I wondered how the e-reader’s carbon footprint, resulting of the production (raw material and sending small parts around the world) and distribution of it, compares to that of paper books. Luckily for both of us, a company called the Cleantech Group crunched the numbers, and came with the answer: by buying 22½ e-books, you compensate for the e-reader’s production and power usage. Any book over this magic number and your carbon footprint starts to shrink! (This particular study was conducted with Amazon’s Kindle, but I think it’s safe to say it won’t differ much between different e-readers. Go e-ink!)
Photo by ceslava.com
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Hands down, Apple’s app store wins by a mile. It’s a huge selection of all sorts of apps vs a rather sad selection of a handful for Zune. Microsoft has plans, especially in the realm of games, but I’m not sure I’d want to bet on the future if this aspect is important to you. The iPod is a much better choice in that case.