We are often use to hear and learn about the various act and action that are creating impact on the environment. Today I am going  to describe about the environmental impact that book are creating. Before starting I would like to apologize  to mentors and everyone for delay submission, this has been missed by me because my health condition at that period. Hope you will accept my sincere apology.

The environmental cost of book comprises of raw materials that are used during the production of book, transportation of the book, energy consumed during the production and waste created. Pollutants are produced both in air and water along with solid waste during the production of books, the most significant air emissions are sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, volatile organic compounds and green house gas emission. During a production  of book the most significant gases produced are carbon dioxide, methane and dinitrogen oxide.  The solvents, printing colors and adhesives that are used during printing, and the alcohol in the cleaning solvents and humidification water releases VOC emissions. It has been found that producing one book consumes two kilowatt hour of fossil fuels and approximately 7.5 kilograms of carbon dioxide. The carbon foot print of an individual book is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emission of a journey of approximately 7.3 kilometers in a new car, CO2e= 164g/km.  Similarly a study of the US book industry for a single year, 2006 has estimated that publishing and producing consumed approximately 30m trees and had a carbon foot print equivalent to 12.4m metric tons of carbon dioxide. A text book that weights 2.18 kg results in 10.2 kg of CO2 equivalent, (Research from UK) . for printing each page, hardcover , emission of the ink amount to 1% per printed product, releasing toxins such as toluene and xylene into the water and air around us. Due to the presence of such volatile compound in the environment have increased the risk of major asthma attack in the survey done by Americans. Realizing all these nowadays e-learning and e-book is mostly preferred though it has most health impact along with less environmental impact. The cleantech study concluded that purchasing three e-book per month for our year produces roughly 168 kilograms of CO2 throughout kindle’s lifecycle, compared to the estimated 1,074 kilograms of CO2 produced by the same number of printed books. E-book saves the energy consumed by book during the production process, saves trees from destruction, reduce the use of paper, eliminate packing materials and energy associated with packaging and delivery, as well reduce energy and pollution needed to recycle or dispose of old books.

To sum up it seems that books has the highest per-unit carbon footprint among publishing sector. Digital magazine, e book produces carbon from their electrical use and printed produces green house gases from decomposing in landfills. Increasing demand for paper is also one of the major causes of deforestation. Out of 17 billon cubic feet of trees are cut down each year and of which 60% are used to make paper. As per the Global forest Resource Assessment roughly about 80,000 to 160,000 trees are cut down each day all across the world of which major portion are used in paper industry.  Thus the recycle of paper is recommended which reduces negative impact on environment along with this reduces landfills, GHG emission.

References:

http://www.bookwell.fi/default.asp?langID=2&sivuID=2752

http://www.ecolibris.net/book_industry_footprint.asp