I was watching a segment on the news the other day with regards to children having to carry over weight textbooks and notebooks in their bags when going to school. The doctor interviewed says that as a rule of thumb, kids should only carry between 2-3 kg on their backs.
Recalling my own childhood I remembered having to carry more than that. Of course to me it really wasn’t a problem because my house was nearby and the whole trek with full gear lasted not more than 8 minutes. So I feel sorry for those kids who have to carry those heavy books much farther.
In college, it got a whole lot worse as our engineering books were about the size of telephone directories. We of course made due by slicing the book in half. We wouldn’t be engineers if we didn’t “find a way” to solve this overloading *snicker.*
When a Department of Education (DepEd) official was interviewed she admitted that the DepEd was only recently aware of this problem but because of more pressing problems at hand was not able to formulate guidelines for it yet.
For my part I think that book publishers have to really start thinking about reducing the sizes of their text books. We should already start making extinct those text books that resemble telephone directories in size.
By reducing our standard textbook sizes we can sidestep this land mine of having kids to carry over weight books as well helping to conserve our forests by not having to cut down more trees in the pursuit of knowledge. What would be great too was if textbooks were made in pocketbook sizes.
Given that we have reduced our tree consumption by recycling books and making their sizes smaller I think we can still one up it a bit more by switching to books stored in electronic format and viewed via electronic readers. This might not be feasible for school kids, but for voracious readers like me, it could be one way to reduce our pastimes negative effect on the environment.
The most popular of ebook readers nowadays is the Amazon Kindle (Shameless affiliate plug below). It’s a wireless device that can store up 200 books and one does not need to have a computer to be able to purchase books online from Amazon.
For my part, I’ve used my PDA as my platform for reading books for almost 3 years already. The great thing about having your books in digital format is that:
- I can read it anywhere, even in the dark because of the back light. I don’t have to disturb the people around me who are sleeping with my reading lamp either.
- I don’t have to go back to my bookshelf to pick up a different book because they’re all in my PDA.
- I don’t have to devote that much space anymore in my house for a book shelf either.
- Since its electronic, I don’t have to wait for mailman to deliver the book or for the local bookstore to have it in stock because I can just buy the book online and download it immediately.
I have to admit though that initially it was an inconvenience reading off my PDA because I’ve already grown accustomed to the feel of a book in my hands when reading. Not to mention not feeling a book’s spine resting on my body also helped contribute to the feeling of awkwardness. It sucks too that my PDA’s screen is “pocket size.” Boy what I’d give for a Kindle. What sucks even more is running out of charge during the climactic episode of that novel you are reading.
Given enough time though I’ve gotten used to reading stuff on digital format. It helps too knowing that you are saving the environment by not having to cut trees to feed your hunger for literature and knowledge.
Of course what would also feel even better was if you knew that the electricity being used to recharge your ebook reader came from renewable energy sources.
Category: Conservation, Environment
