[Jaydax]

Doing a little research I found the average book, by the time the trees have been felled, paper produced, book printed and distributed, has a carbon footprint of 8.5 lb of carbon dioxide added to the environment. Here in the UK alone we produce almost a billion tonnes of greenhouse gas per year by this.

Add magazines and the total is well over the billion.

More research tells me that 97% can be saved if we buy e-books instead. Anyone with a Kindle will tell you how much easier it is to buy and read books like this. Added to that, the cost to the user is usually less and authors make more money from e-book sales!

So what does the government think? They apply 0% VAT to paper books and 20% VAT to e-books. This is crazy!

There's an e-petition about this (yes they're back). The government may debate this if it collects 100,000 signatures. Please consider signing it and promoting it to others.

http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/114

[Jaydax]

...and when are PC Pro and Computer Shopper going to offer an electronic version? Think about that 97% guys.

[mrstevenrogers]

we just warm the planet up by wifi micro wave instead ...

[Jaydax]

I'm sure there will be energy costs of using e-books. The readers have an energy cost in producing them, storing them in warehouses and shipping them. Wi-fi costs will be minimal though but not insignificant if you bought the equipment just to download e-books. Most of us already have this equipment for other purposes though.

Anyone know what the carbon footprint of an e-book reader is? I'm sure it's less than that of the 3,000 paper books I have.