Save A Tree, Buy An E-reader
When I was a kid (and i’d like to think that this was not too long ago) I thought that books were good in every kind of way. What could possibly be wrong with books? They help expand your imagination, they can be educational, and they strengthen one very important skill… reading.*
Even now I believe that books symbolize education and that sort of thing. There is just one overshadowing consequence that comes along with books which dawned on me the other day when I walked into a Barnes & Noble; It takes trees to make books.
Now, I have absolutely nothing against B&N in particular. In fact, I think it is a great company as far as I know, and it they do have very nice store. But it just hit me while i was walking in an out of the aisles. “there is an immense amount of books in this one store. how many trees did it take to create this many books?” And it’s not like this is a resources that is recycled. Most books are held on to, taken care of, and passed down for many many years. Some books even get there own air tight rooms and are only handled with white gloves, never to become a tree again.
I suddenly felt that buying books was a bad horrible thing. Buying that book in my hand (ironically about how to be a more earth friendly, sustainable designer) meant that I had a part in cutting down the rain forests.
Over course, I was being a bit dramatic, but seriously, we cut down a shit load of books to make trees. I wasn’t going to stop buying books, because that would mean I would have to stop reading books. But I did feel bad about buying new books…
Anyway, long story short(er), I am looking into buying an electronic book or reader because of all of this. I can carry a crazy amount of books around in one of them, I don’t feel all stupid guilty about buying a book, and it is cheaper to buy (and produce) a book electronically.
im not gonna get all activist on your ass, but seriously. stop killing trees for your stupid reading habit. here are the two brands of eReaders that seem to be the most popular / work the best:
THE READER DIGITAL BOOK (From SONY)
OR
THE KINDLE (From AMAZON)
*this does not mean that one who reads will nessicalrily be good at writing, as you can probably tell by my poor writing skills here.