I remember people discussing the carbon footprint of the K1. The analysis, and this is based on memory, was that reading 44 e-books on your K1 essentially cancelled out the building, shipping, transportation, and battery impact of the K1.
A quick Google search brought up the following articles most from 2009:
http://gigaom.com/cleantech/why-the-...or-the-planet/
Quote:
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For the emergence of the e-Book over the past three years, we can thank breakthroughs in electronic paper display technology and the buildout of high-speed wireless networks. But as use of these gadgets continues to grow, we’ll be able to thank the e-Book itself for some significant reductions in carbon emissions. According to a fascinating report from the Cleantech Group, called The Environmental Impact of Amazon’s Kindle, one e-Book device on average can displace the buying of about 22.5 physical books per year, and thus deliver an estimated savings of 168 kg of CO2 per year. (2009)
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http://www.quillandquire.com/blog/in...iendly-option/
There is some disagreement on this, no surprise there, but it sure seems that if you read somewhere between 22.5 and 44 books on an e-reader you are going to offset the envirmental cost of your e-reader. I don't fully get why it matters if you use the device over its entire life cycle as long as you read more then the minimum number of books for an offset.
I would imagine that smaller devices that use less plastic would also drop the number of books you would need to read to offset the enivormental cost of building and shipping the device.