Amazon eBook Readers are Green

Amazon's Kindle eBook reader is a great 'green' way to read books, news and other web content. Book, newspaper and magazine creation and distribution is a high energy consumption and resource consuming process. The Kindle is the 'green' answer to the current energy inefficient process of book distribution.

In order to create and distribute books, magazine and newspapers, we need to:

  • Chop down trees
  • Transport the raw trees to a processing facility
  • Cut/Mash the wood into pulp
  • Transport the pulp to another facility to press the pulp into sheets
  • Ship the sheets to printers that print on them with ink, cut and bind them
  • Ship the finished products to distributors around the world
  • Distributors ship the products either directly to consumers, or to retailers

The ebook reader makes this whole process go away. But, the Kindle makes the electronic discovery, purchase and distribution easy for just about everyone.

With it's free built-in wireless broadband connection, users can browse, purchase and download electronic books directly from the Amazon store. 

As they should be, eBooks are often much cheaper for consumers than their print counterparts. All new release books cost $9.99. Most of the NYT best sellers are also $9.99. Newspaper subscriptions cost $5.99 to $14.99 per month. Magazine subscriptions cost between $1.25 and $3.49 per month.

With an electronic ink display, the Kindle is both low power and easy to read even in bright sunlight. The display works like regular ink on standard paper, so the more light shining on the page, the brighter the display is.

At introduction, the Amazon Kindle is priced at $399.00, and the wireless connection comes pre-setup and ready to go.