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Originally Posted by OtterBooks
Very true. It depends on how long the device is used. Not everyone will dump their ereader for every new generation. Sources I've seen claim that the carbon footprint for an ereader is equal to about 40 books, which I'd say is easily achieved by most ereader customers. But those paper books can also be re-used by multiple people, and more of the materials used to make them are renewable and can be recycled.
The question of ecological impact of paper vs. ebooks is an interesting one with many dimensions. If I weren't so lazy I'd make a thread for discussion.
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But when you talk about paper books being re-used by multiple people, how many of them really are? The bookstores get paperbacks, stock them for a short time, then send just the covers back to the publisher to get credited for the unsold ones - those paperbooks never even get used once before they enter the waste stream. At the local recycle center, I have seen whole dumpsters full of books, with covers even, not just the stripcover books dumped by the retail stores. A lot of paper books are used once, just like magazines. Second stop, landfill.
Compare this to e-readers. When we get a new device, if the old one still works, we don't pitch it - we hand it down. If I were to replace my ereader I could give the old one away within a few hours, to someone who would be tickled pink to get it. And since I paid so much for the darn thing, I'd make a special effort to give my castoff to one of these people. Even if one of my readers died, I'm sure it would be valued by a nerdy friend with a soldering iron - it wouldn't get to the landfill for years. I'd say that a much larger percentage of ereaders will make it to the secondhand market, than paper books.
The key to making readers greener is to make them more reliable and durable, and maintain enough scarcity by keeping the price up. Unfortunately for the planet, the tech is probably headed the other way. They're going to get cheaper, more disposable, more common, less prized. But for now? They're not yet highly represented in the waste stream.
What I would not be surprised to see, is a college textbook sold already installed on an ereader. When a textbook costs $150 on paper, the price of a dedicated hardware device to read it on is a much smaller percentage of the cost. They already have MP3 players like this at the library, they are audiobooks with one book on its own device, and no data port. It's like hardware DRM. As the ereader prices come down they will do this with the more expensive ebooks.