Are eBooks Better for the Environment?

In January of 2011, Microcosm Publishing offered a service where customers could exchange the Kindle that they had received for the holidays for an equitable value of our books. The campaign was a huge success and we receive calls six years later asking if we are still offering the exchange. But the most confusing aspect of the news cycle that followed was the “investigating journalism” that tracked “the real impact of e-readers vs paperbacks.” I devoured dozens of articles on this subject and each one looked solely at the carbon impact of each format, the expected life cycle of a book…