New children's book, Concerto Tutti by Tapio (publisher: Galaxias) is going green with Eco-Libris!

We're happy to announce on a new collaboration of Eco-Libris: the German publisher Galaxias is partnering with us to plant trees for a new great children's book: Concerto Tutti by Tapio.

One tree will be planted for every printed copy of the book! Already 800 new trees are being planted with our planting partners to green it up! In addition the book is printed on FSC-certified paper.

What's the book is all about? Here are more details on Concerto Tutti:

The book “Concerto Tutti“ by Finish German Author and Illustrator Tapio invites you to visit the peaceful lake “sleeping dino,” somewhere in the deep deep jungle. Visit the big crocodile, its friends the gorillas and the sassy little frogs, who tease the crocodile and other inhabitants of the lake by loud croaking and with their newly invented “water fart drive”. Until one day the crocodile calls for its old friends the pelicans. Pelican named Karajan finally finds a solution for the quarrels in the jungle and turns out to be a real “maestro”…

Currently the book is only available in German but Galaxias hopes to be able to spread the lovely story of the “Concerto Tutti” also in other countries.

Read more on www.galaxias-verlag.de (soon with English translation).

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Our website is down due to server problems

I wanted to update you that our website is now down due to a problem with the server. We apologize for any inconvenience this might cause and hope to be online again ASAP!


Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Update (7/30): The server's problems are finally over and Eco-Libris website is live and kicking! Visit us at http://www.ecolibris.net/

New children's book, Earth Remembers When by Dawn Wynne, is going green with Eco-Libris!

We're glad to update you on a new children's book that is going green with Eco-Libris: Earth Remembers When by Dawn Wynne.

100 trees will be planted with Eco-Libris to green up this great book that offers guidelines and solutions for children of all ages to make a positive impact on the environment. You can find our logo indicating that 100 trees are planted for this book on its back cover (see picture below).

Here are more details on "Earth Remembers When":

From best-selling author and award winning teacher, Dawn Wynne, comes Earth Remembers When, a richly illustrated story that visually demonstrates how humans affect nature. It offers guidelines and solutions for children of all ages to make a positive impact on the environment.

Filled with facts, tips, activities, and recipes, Earth Remembers When provides children with unique knowledge about animals and the planet along with self-empowering methods to make a difference in our world.

The book is not available yet for sale, but in the meantime you're welcome to check Dawn's other book "I Remember When," which is available on her website.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Moon Willow Press's Summer Reading Program offers free ebooks every week!

Moon Willow Press, a small publishing company committed to helping sustain forests while celebrating the written word, which partners with Eco-Libris to plant trees for its published books, is running this summer a great Summer Reading Program.

This program, which will run until September 8, 2012 is designed to promote reading and tree-planting. All summer, every weekend, Moon Willow Press will be offering free e-books! Check back weekly.

Here are more details on the Summer Reading Program:

Free Kindle downloads every weekend: Smoke Ghosts and Other Outré Tales is our seventh freebie during our summer reading promotion and is free July 14-15 from Amazon Kindle. Click here for the full schedule of free downloads this summer.

Contest to win a *$50.00 Amazon gift card: When you buy any paperback title from Moon Willow Press between June 1 – September 8, you will automatically be entered into our Summer Reading Contest to win a $50.00 gift certificate to Amazon.com. The contest is open to all ages. How does it work?

*Amazon.ca – $50.00 (CAD) for Canadian residents or Amazon.com – $50.00 (USD) for all other countries

1. When you buy a paperback book from MWP between June 1 – September 8, Moon Willow Press will enter your name and contact details into a summer reading database.
2. For each Moon Willow Press paperback title you purchase, you will be entered into the contest drawing. The more reading of our books that you do, the better chance you have to win! (You can only win once!)
3. On September 8, Moon Willow Press will draw ten names from a random generator and contact the buyers.
4. Of those ten, we will ask for a statement not to exceed 500 words relating what books you read over the summer and how reading has changed your life. These statements must be emailed to us by the official end of summer: September 21, 2012, midnight Pacific time.
5. Moon Willow Press’s Mary, and others, will judge the ten responses. We will be judging responses by a combination of how many books you’ve read over the summer (please be honest and list each one!), grammatical accuracy, interesting thought process (can be humorous, motivational, etc.), and timeliness of your response. Responses received after midnight PDT will be discarded, and those entrants will be ineligible to win.
6. All final 10 entries will win a free Moon Willow Press annual membership.
7. The winner and response will be announced September 24th, and the gift card will be emailed to the winner on September 25.

Reduced Prices: All 2011 paperbacks have been reduced in price. Click our Book Catalog for more information.

Tree-planting initiative: A portion of all sales during this time will be donated to Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for each book you read.

For more information on Moon Willow Press visit their website at http://www.moonwillowpress.com

Past collaborations with Moon Willow Press:

Infernal Drums by Anthony Wright

Smoke Ghosts & Other Outré Tales, by Anthony Wright

The Little Big Town by Mary Woodbury

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

House Improvement Ideas for A Greener Life At Home

This is a guest column by Aileen Pablo

As homes become older and people are opting to make improvements rather than move to new locations, more families are wondering what they can do to not only save themselves money but also create a more eco-friendly environment. After all, older homes were built without the innovative materials found in newer homes today making them more of an energy drain than most homeowners would care to admit.

If you are looking for ways to update your older home into a greener way to live, here are a few projects you can do in your house.

• Add insulation – This is the easiest way to keep moderate temperatures in and extreme elements out. With recent updates to insulation technology older homes are less equipped to help homeowners do this. Adding insulation can cut your energy costs year round by as much as 10%. And not only is this savings significant but so is the savings to the environment is energy it takes to heat or cool your home.

• Plant a tree – This is a great way to quickly upgrade the look of your home, add more carbon dioxide eating plants and create shade to help keep the sun from beating down on your house causing it to heat up faster. With so many benefits it is one of the easiest ways to make a quick and extremely green switch to improve your home.

• Go solar without the panels – Just as you want to cool your house naturally on hot days, you will also want to use the power of the sun to help heat your home on cold days. If you have windows that are exposed to the sun, direct the warming rays into your home by opening up your blinds and letting them in. Darkening your house only keeps the cool temperatures inside but exposing it to some natural solar heating helps you to naturally add some warmth without using excessive gas with your heating system.

• Save Water – Saving electricity is not the only way to make your home go green. You can also make quick and easy updates to your appliances to save water. This is especially true with older appliances such as toilets and showerheads. In fact, low flow toilets can save an average of 4,000 gallons each year and low flow showerheads can reduce your usage by as much as 50%. Update your home with new looks that come with water saving technology and cut your water bill by gallons each month.

• Use sensors on lights – You may feel more comfortable having your lights on in the early evening hours when there is traffic on the street and more people likely to stop by unexpectedly. However, once you are in bed and during the wee hours of the morning, save electricity and set your lights to turn off automatically. This way, you can cut costs without having to rely on your memory to turn off the lights each night before bed.

• Weather strip old windows and door jams – As much as 30% of your heating and cooling can slip out of your home and let in the extreme temperatures you are trying to keep out without the proper weather stripping. Visit your local home improvement store to find the right solution for your home and start insulating your door jams and windows easily and more efficiently to reduce costs immediately.

• Use zone heating methods intelligently – Many people think by having a wood burning fire they are adding to the warmth of their home. However, these fireplaces tend to suck more heat out of the home by allowing it to get sucked up the chimney then they add. Instead, use covered fireplaces to allow the heat to ventilate out of the fireplace and avoid it from being sucked up through the chimney.

• Replace your appliances with high efficiency solutions – New technology has given homeowners a way to go green and protect the environment through high efficiency appliances. Even more money saving and encouraging to make this switch are the utility companies that provide their customers with additional rebates just for making the switch. Contact your utility providers to see if this is something they will do for you.

Homeowners can save significant money each year by making these small home improvement updates and turn their home from an environmental drain to an eco-friendly living solution.

[Image credit: nikcame, Flickr Creative Commons]

Author Bio:

Aileen Pablo is part of the team behind Open Colleges, one of Australia’s leading providers of TAFE courses equivalent and interior design courses. When not working, Aileen blogs about travel, lifestyle, home improvement, and beauty tips. She is also often invited as a speaker in Personality Development Seminars in the Philippines.If you have a blog and would like free content. You can find him on Google+.

How green is the new iPad - part 7: break-even point between ebooks and paper books

This is the the final chapter in our our 7-part series, where we're exploring the carbon footprint and environmental impacts of the new iPad, comparing it to those of the iPad 2 and trying to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new break-even point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

On every part of the series we're looking into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad. We already covered production, energy efficiency, packaging, restricted substances, recycling and the total carbon footprint. Today we're looking into the break-even point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

Break-even point between books and ebooks on the iPad:

Here is the information on the break-even point of the new iPad (source: Apple's report)

For this comparison, I'll use the figure of 7.46 kg CO2 to represent the lifecycle carbon emissions of an average book. This is also the figure I used for the comparison made for the first model of the iPad.

This figure was presented on the Cleantech report (The Environmental Impact of Amazon's Kindle) and according to the report based on three independent studies that used life cycle analysis calculators to assess the impact of raw materials (I know it's much higher from the figure of 4.01 kg presented on the 2008 Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry report, but I believe it helps to make the comparison more conservative).

So, given that the carbon footprint of the new iPad is 180kg CO2, then the break-even point is: new iPad = 24.1 paper books.

It means that putting aside all the other uses of the new iPad, then from a carbon footprint point of view, it becomes a more environmental friendly alternative option for book reading once you finished reading your 24th book on your new iPad (or 25th book if you want to be more accurate).

If you make the comparison based on the 4.01 kg CO2 per book (provided by the Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry report), the break-even point is 44.89 books.

This is of course a conservative estimate since the iPad, as a tablet computer, has many other users and actually reading ebooks is not the most popular use of these devices. If you take other uses in consideration, the break-even point may be lower.

Here is the information on the break-even point of the iPad 2 (source: Apple's report - revised version):

Using the figure of 7.46kg CO2 to represent the lifecycle carbon emissions of an average book and given that the carbon footprint of the iPad 2 is 130kg CO2, then the break-even point is: iPad 2 = 17.4 paper books.

It means that putting aside all the other uses of the iPad 2, then from a carbon footprint point of view, it becomes a more environmental friendly alternative option for book reading once you finished reading your 17th book on your new iPad (or 18th book if you want to be more accurate).

If you make the comparison based on the 4.01 kg CO2 per book (provided by the Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry report), the break-even point is 32.4 books.

Our take: The new iPad has a significantly higher break-even point comparing to the iPad 2, representing the differences between their carbon footprints.

Bottom line: Making the argument that reading ebooks is greener has become a bit more difficult with the new iPad as the break-even point has gone up. This is definitely not the direction it should be going with newer versions of the iPad. Better devices should also mean smaller carbon footprints, otherwise this might be a technological progress, but it's definitely not a sustainable one.

Here are the parts of the series that were released so far:

Part 1 - production
Part 2 - energy efficiency
Part 3 - packaging
Part 4 - restricted substances
Part 5 - recycling
Part 6 - carbon footprint

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks vs. physical books environmental debate can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

We have a winner on the Skinnydipping giveaway!

Last week we reviewed and recommended on a great new audiobook -
Skinnydipping by Bethenny Frankel, read by January LaVoy. The audiobook is published by Simon & Schuster Audio.

We also had a giveaway of one copy of the audiobook. We asked you to tell us in which reality show you would like to be on and we got some great answers. And we have a winner! Our winner is Lisa, who wrote:

"I'd be on Top Chef, not because I can cook I just want to try everyone else's food."

Congrats, Lisa! You have won a copy of Skinnydipping and we hope you'll enjoy it! Next week we'll continue in our summer series of audiobook recommendations with another great audiobook - Mercury.

Have a great weekend!

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

How green is the new iPad - part 6: comparing the carbon footprint of the new iPad and iPad 2

After a short break we're back with our 7-part series in which we explore the carbon footprint and environmental impacts of the new iPad, compare it to those of the iPad 2 and try to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new breakeven point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

On every part of the series we're looking into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad. We already covered production, energy efficiency, packaging, restricted substances and recycling. Today we're looking at the total carbon footprint.

Total carbon footprint:

Here is the information on the total carbon footprint of the new iPad (source: Apple's report):

	Emissions
Production	120.6
Customer use	45
Transport	10.8
Recycling	3.6
Total	180

Here is the information on the total carbon footprint of the iPad 2 (source: Apple's report - revised version):

	Emissions
Production	85.8
Customer use	29.9
Transport	11.7
Recycling	2.6
Total	130

Comparison between the carbon footprint of the new iPad and the iPad 2:

	new iPad	iPad 2	Change
Production	120.6	85.8	40.6%
Customer use	45	29.9	50.5%
Transport	10.8	11.7	-7.7%
Recycling	3.6	2.6	38.5%
Total	180	130	38.5%

Our take: The picture is very clear - the new iPad has a significantly higher carbon footprint comparing to the iPad 2. Other than transportation, where we see some decline in emissions, all the other parts of the life cycle of the iPad have became more carbon intensive.

Bottom line: Apple is doing a poor job when it comes the carbon emissions of the iPad, not ensuring that a newer version will also be a greener one from a carbon footprint standpoint.

Next part on our series: Breakeven point for ebooks vs. books

Here are the parts of the series that were released so far:

Part 1 - production
Part 2 - energy efficiency
Part 3 - packaging
Part 4 - restricted substances
Part 5 - recycling

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks vs. physical books environmental debate can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

How green is the New iPad - part 5: Recycling

Last week we started a 7-part series in which we explore the carbon footprint and environmental impacts of the new iPad, compare it to those of the iPad 2 and try to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new breakeven point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

On every part of the series we're looking into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad. We already covered production, energy efficiency, packaging and restricted substances. Today we're looking at recycling.

Recycling:

Here is the information on the recycling of the new iPad (source: Apple's report):

Through ultra-efficient design and the use of highly recyclable materials, Apple has minimized material waste at the product’s end of life. In addition, Apple offers and participates in various product take-back and recycling programs in 95 percent of the regions where Apple products are sold. All products are processed in the country or region in which they are collected. For more information on how to take advantage of these programs, visit www.apple.com/recycling.

Here is the information on the recycling of the iPad 2 (source: Apple's report - revised version):

Through ultra-efficient design and the use of highly recyclable materials, Apple has minimized material waste at the product’s end of life. In addition, Apple offers and participates in various product take-back and recycling programs in 95 percent of the regions where Apple products are sold. All products are processed in the country or region in which they are collected. For more information on how to take advantage of these programs, visit www.apple.com/recycling.

Our take: Basically, Apple copied the text it used for the iPad 2. The only thing is that Apple, as we showed in part 1 - production, is actually using more materials in the new iPad comparing to the iPad 2.

Bottom line: Apple is static when it comes to recycling and the offer stays the same. We'll have to see if it will manage in the future to provide consumers further incentives and to recycle their iPads. To be fair it's also important to mention that Apple products' recycling rate is 70 percent, which is pretty high comparing to its competitors.

Next part on our series: Total carbon footprint

Here are the parts of the series that were released so far:

Part 1 - production
Part 2 - energy efficiency
Part 3 - packaging
Part 4 - restricted substances

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks vs. physical books environmental debate can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

How green is the New iPad - part 4: Restricted substances

Last week we started a 7-part series in which we explore the carbon footprint and environmental impacts of the new iPad, compare it to those of the iPad 2 and try to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new breakeven point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

Every day we're looking into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad. We already covered production, energy efficiency and packaging. Today we're looking at restricted substances.

Restricted substances:

Here is the information on the restricted substances of the new iPad (source: Apple's report):

Apple has long taken a leadership role in restricting harmful substances from its products and packaging. As part of this strategy, all Apple products comply with the strict European Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment, also known as the RoHS Directive. Examples of materials restricted by RoHS include lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, and the brominated flame retardants (BFRs) PBB and PBDE. iPad goes even further than the requirements of the RoHS Directive by incorporating the following more aggressive restrictions:

• Mercury-free LED-backlit display
• Arsenic-free display glass
• BFR-free
• Polyvinyl chloride (PVC)−free

Here is the information on the restricted substances of the iPad 2 (source: Apple's report - revised version):

Apple has long taken a leadership role in restricting harmful substances from its products and packaging. As part of this strategy, all Apple products comply with the strict European Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment, also known as the RoHS Directive. Examples of materials restricted by RoHS include lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, and the brominated flame retardants (BFRs) PBB and PBDE. iPad 2 goes even further than the requirements of the RoHS Directive by incorporating the following more aggressive restrictions:

• Mercury-free LED-backlit display
• Arsenic-free display glass
• BFR-free
• Polyvinyl chloride (PVC)−free

Our take: Basically, nothing has changed in the newest version of the iPad when it comes to restricted substances. The text is the same text, which means that no new steps have been taken to improve the new iPad from hazardous substances use standpoint.

Bottom line: Apple is static when it comes to restricted substances. We'll have to see if it gets more innovative about it in the next version or maybe this is as good as it gets.

Next part on our series: Recycling.

Here are the parts of the series that were released so far:

Part 1 - production
Part 2 - energy efficiency
Part 3 - packaging

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks vs. physical books environmental debate can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

How green is the New iPad - part 3: Packaging

Last Thursday we started a 7-part series in which we explore the carbon footprint and environmental impacts of the new iPad, compare it to those of the iPad 2 and try to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new breakeven point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

Every day we're looking into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad. We already covered production and energy efficiency. Today we're looking at packaging.

Packaging:

Here is the information on the packaging of the new iPad (source: Apple's report):

The packaging for iPad is highly recyclable. It uses corrugated cardboard made from a minimum of 28 percent post-consumer recycled content and molded fiber made entirely from recycled content. In addition, its packaging is extremely material efficient, allowing up to 52 percent more units to be transported in an airline shipping container compared with the original iPad. The following table details the materials used in iPad packaging.

Packaging Breakdown for iPad (U.S. Configurations, in grams)

Material	Retail box	Retail and shipping box
Paper (corrugate, molder fiber)	212	445
High impact polystyrene	70	70
Other plastics	9	9

Here is the information on the packaging of the iPad 2 (source: Apple's report - revised version):

The packaging for iPad 2 is highly recyclable. It uses corrugated cardboard made from a minimum of 28 percent post-consumer recycled content and molded fiber made entirely from recycled content. In addition, its packaging is extremely material efficient, allowing up to 52 percent more units to be transported in an airline shipping container compared with the original iPad. The following table details the materials used in iPad 2 packaging.

Packaging Breakdown for iPad (U.S. Configurations, in grams)

Material	Retail box	Retail and shipping box
Paper (corrugate, molder fiber)	207	440
High impact polystyrene	68	68
Other plastics	9	9

Here's a comparison of the data presented in these tables, showing the change in %:

Material	Retail box	Retail and shipping box
Paper (corrugate, molder fiber)	2.4%	1.1%
High impact polystyrene	2.9%	2.9%
Other plastics	0.0%	0.0%

Our take: Nothing has really changed in the packaging. Apple basically provided the same specifications on packaging it provided for the iPad 2. In terms of weight the packaging of the new iPad actually uses more materials and weights more, which also means it has a larger carbon footprint.

Bottom line: Apple has failed to make any improvements whatsoever in the packaging of the new iPad. If anything, it only made it heavier.

Next part on our series: Restricted substances.

Here are the parts of the series that were released so far:

Part 1 - production

Part 2 - energy efficiency

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks vs. physical books environmental debate can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

How Green is the New iPad - part 2: comparing energy efficiency with the iPad 2

The new iPad has been with us almost 4 months and we decided it's about time to analyze its carbon footprint. Yesterday we started a 7-part series in which we explore the carbon footprint of the new iPad, compare it to the carbon footprint of iPad 2 and try to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new breakeven point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

Every day we'll look into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad. Yesterday we talked about production. Today we're looking at energy efficiency.

Energy efficiency:

Here is the information on the energy efficiency of the new iPad (source: Apple's report):

iPad uses power-efficient components and software that intelligently manage power consumption. In addition, the iPad 10W USB Power Adapter outperforms the stringent requirements of the ENERGY STAR specification for external power supplies. The following table details the power consumed by iPad in different use modes.

Mode	100V	115V	230V
Sleep	0.65w	0.65w	0.70w
idle - display on	5.26w	5.26w	5.46w
power adapter, no load	0.07w	0.07w	0.09w
power adapter efficiency	80.90%	80.80%	79.90%

And here is the information on the energy efficiency of the iPad 2 (source: Apple's report - revised version):

iPad 2 uses power-efficient components and software that intelligently manage power consumption. In addition, the iPad 10W USB Power Adapter outperforms the stringent requirements of the ENERGY STAR specification for external power supplies. The following table details the power consumed by iPad 2 in different use modes.

Mode	100V	115V	230V
Sleep	0.46w	0.41w	0.45w
idle - display on	3.10w	3.08w	3.16w
power adapter, no load	0.07w	0.07w	0.09w
power adapter efficiency	80.90%	80.80%	79.90%

Here's a comparison of the data presented in these tables, showing the change in %:

Mode	100V	115V	230V
Sleep	41%	59%	56%
idle - display on	70%	71%	73%
power adapter, no load	0%	0%	0%
power adapter efficiency	0%	0%	0%

Here's our take: When it comes to energy efficiency it looks like the iPad hasn't made any progress. It either moves backwards, using more power (sleep and idle mode) or shows no change at all (power adapter - no load, power adapter efficiency).

Is it really important? The answer is yes! Customer use is about 25 percent of the carbon footprint of the iPad, so better energy efficiency generates substantial improvements in the carbon footprint, which unfortunately is not the case here.

Bottom line: Apple has failed to make any improvements whatsoever in the energy efficiency of the new iPad. If anything, it only made it less efficient.

Next part on our series: Packaging.

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks vs. physical books environmental debate can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

How Green is the New iPad - part 1: comparing materials and production footprint to iPad 2

The new iPad has been with us almost 4 months (time goes by so fast..) and we figured it's about time to make a comparative analysis of its carbon footprint. In the next week or so we're going to explore the carbon footprint of the new iPad, compare it to the carbon footprint of iPad 2 and try to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new breakeven point between books and ebooks on the iPad. Every day we'll look into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad, starting today with production.

First, I have to say Apple should get kudos for the fact that it is releasing the carbon footprint of every new iPad it is releasing. No matter how their CSR is far from perfection or how they're behind most of the companies when it comes to sustainability or CDP reporting, when it comes to disclosing the environmental footprint of its products Apple is leading the way. e-reader and tablet sellers like Amazon or B&N are not even close to Apple, making basically every comparison between the environmental of books and ebooks on their products impossible. Therefore we should definitely appreciate the fact that Apple provide us with this detailed information.

Second, I want to mention that Apple revised the environmental report on the carbon footprint of iPad 2 (here's a link to the original report and here's the updated one). Apple of course excels in updates but this is still interesting given the fact that the revisions are quite substantial. We'll talk about it specifically in later on this week.

And after this long introduction we can finally start the first part of our analysis, which will be focused on production. We included not just information on the the new iPad and iPad 2, but also on the first iPad to give us a better understanding of the changes we see in the latest version of the iPad.

Production:
Carbon footprint of the new iPad - 120.6 kg CO2e
Carbon footprint of the iPad 2 - 85.8 kg CO2e
(Carbon footprint of the iPad - 75.4 kg CO2e)

Change: +40.6%

The new iPad continues a trend (at least according to the figures of the revised environmental footprint of the iPad 2) of growing carbon footprint when it comes to production. As you can see this is a significant increase of 40 percent and it's not clear what's the reason for it, as Apple claims that the materials have a reduced carbon footprint, which also helps to maximize shipping efficiency.

Here you can see the materials used for the new iPad (source: Apple's report):

And here are the materials used for the iPad2 (source: Apple's report - revised version)

Here's a comparison of the data presented in these graphs (weight, in grams):

	New iPad	iPad 2	Change
Display	132	142	- 7.0%
Plastics	10	19	-47.4%
Other metals	28	26	+7.7%
Circuit boards	40	40	0.0%
Glass	112	115	-2.6%
Battery	205	131	+56.5%
Aluminum	135	140	-3.6%

Let's see first what Apple says on the materials of the new iPad:

Apple’s ultracompact product and packaging designs lead the industry in material
efficiency. Reducing the material footprint of a product helps maximize shipping
efficiency. It also helps reduce energy consumed during production and material waste
generated at the end of the product’s life. iPad is made of aluminum and other materials
highly desired by recyclers.

Here's our take: First, it's interesting to see that Apple talks about reduction of the material footprint. If Apple refers to weight then the weight of the materials on the new iPad (662 grams) is actually greater than the weight of iPad 2 (613 grams) in total. If Apple refers to the carbon footprint of the materials then we have no way to know whether it's true or not, as Apple doesn't provide the figures - only weight and the carbon footprint of the production, which probably includes more elements (any in any case is higher in the new iPad).

Also, other than the battery which is heavier on the new iPad, it seems that Apple has managed to achieve in general incremental reductions. Only the change that was made in plastic is rather substantial with a reduction of almost 50 percent.

Bottom line: When it comes to production the new iPad is actually going backwards, generating a significant higher carbon footprint. While Apple claims that the materials have lower footprint, we have no way to know it due to lack of data and we can see that in total the weight of materials used to build the iPad has gone up in the new iPad. In all, the big picture is quite disappointing to those who were looking to see improvement and progress with regards to the production and materials efficiency of the iPad.

Next part on our series: comparing energy efficiency.

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks vs. physical books environmental debate can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!