Esquire eInk Abuse Exposed
by Christine Lepisto, Berlin on 07.25.08
Image credit: James Ebbinger and Esquire
Esquire Magazine: the Darth Vader of Electronic Reading
Perhaps inevitably, eInk is already being turned to the Dark Side. The Darth Vader of eInk: Esquire Magazine. To celebrate 75 years of Esquire History, or perhaps in a desperate attempt to prove to the wired generation that magazines can be high tech too, Esquire will sport an electronic ink cover on its September Issue. Except for the few copies destined for the Smithsonian and other collections, that will be a 100,000 electronic pages which will be e-waste at latest when the battery runs out after 90 days. Is there hope of redemption from this environmental faux pas?
Electronic Ink before Esquire
Is eInk an impending environmental disaster? eInk, the (r)evolutionary technology which enables low-power electronic presentation of texts, and which has been heralded as the successor to Bio-Optic Organized Knowledge (BOOK), has met with mixed reviews in the sustainability community. "Will it be just another electronic gadget, leading to new cycles of consumerism and waste?" we asked ourselves. "Or will it end the processing of trees into short-lived periodicals?"
Ford Sponsors Esquire eInk Cover
Esquire has cooperated with E Ink, the company that produces the technology used in Amazon's Kindle, to produce the magazine cover billboards, which will perform the somewhat underwhelming feat of flashing "The 21st Century Begins Now". Ford will sponsor the gimmick, defraying the outlandish expense with an advertisement on the inside of the cover showing the new Ford minivan-sport utility vehicle, the Flex, moving across the page.
Esquire eInk Cover 6 Figure Development Cost
But is there hope behind the hype? According to the New York Times, Esquire spent six figures developing a battery small enough to fit into a magazine cover and still power the eInk gadget for 90 days. Could this investment show promise for advancing the cause of eInk reader technology? Well, probably not. Not if they have a future of disposable electronic periodicals in mind. And what else are paper-thin batteries good for?
The Environmental Consequences of Esquire's eInk Cover
So just how much of an environmental disaster is Esquire's misguided eInk escapade? Fast Company did the math. Accounting for manufacture of the batteries and display in China, assembly of the magazine covers in Mexico and then delivery to newstands in refrigerated trucks (to preserve the delicate batteries!), Fast Company estimates:
"150 tons of CO2 equivalent, similar to the output of 15 Hummers or 20 average Americans for an entire year, and a 16% increase over the carbon footprint of a typical print publication."
So is there an upside? Well, perhaps the outrage will prevent any further foolishness with disposable electronic periodicals. And we hope the publishing industry puts its thinking cap on, and comes up with proposals more like the French media did: newspapers get together to sell digital reader.
“This is really the 1.0 version,” said Kevin O’Malley, Esquire’s publisher, in the New York Times. We hope it is version 1-point-NEVER-Again.
More on eInk and Electronic Readers:
Electronic Books Are Catching On
French Newspapers Get Together to Sell Digital Reader
Electronic Books: The Next Chapter
TreeHugger Forums
More on the Esquire eInk Fiasco:
Fast Company
New York Times
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- 7 Ways to Make Your Gadgets Last
- Who Are the Greentronic Companies? Check the Scoreboard.
- 60 Minutes Reporter Attacked in Chinese E-Waste Pit
- How to Go Green: Gadgets
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I imagine MAKErs could eat them up and reuse them.
Can someone hack the Esquire cover into an eBook reader?
Or is the e-life too short ...
I've been waiting years for an inexpensive, hackable source of e-ink paper to dabble with. If I can find them around here, I'll be buying at least two.
16% more carbon than a typical publication? That sounds promising to me. What if they threw out the rest of the publication and made the cover into a real e-book that could display any of the pages? A rough guestimate is that the result would be 80% lower carbon than a regular print publication. If those numbers are right, they are doing a good thing by pioneering a technology that could lead to a dramatic reduction in carbon emissions.
It is unlikely that the eink paper they are using for Esquire will allow for general level use --ie eInk readers.
This is because most colour eInk comes with a very limited set of colours on each ball.
it's difficult to make a decent eReader without two contrasting colours on all the balls ( though black and white are best any two contrasting colours on all balls would also work -- ie red and blue )
If I'm wrong about the colour sets on all balls of Esquire's cover having contrasting coulors.... :D:D
Then Esquire has just given MAKErs a great low cost toy for eReaders, etc
Environmentally eInk can be a very good thing if it is used correctly - such as low cost mass produced reusable rechargeable readers. Imagine one eInk reader to replace every textbook you ever needed during your entire education from preschool to PHD -- that's a lot of paper saved.
When it is used for throw away advertising then it becomes a bad environmental decision.
Unfortunately, the eInk cover is not an addressable display, just two full images which are switched back and forth. Cannot be reused for other purposes.
Come on guys, so what if they used 16% more resources than a regular magazine issue. You truly 'can't see the forest for the trees' here! This is like one small step for treehuggers, and one giant leap for mankind!
Its amazing to me that the same groups of people who are adamantly proposing the electric car as the answer to a cleaner environment and oil independence balk at any improvement in battery technology which might help bring about such a transition.