Quote:
Originally Posted by carpetmojo
Books - paper, ink, leather, faux-leather or plastic, glue, thread ?
Infrastructure - paper-mills, printing shop, transport,postage, some advertising, existing shops and on-line to sell.
Mostly biodegradeable
Readers - well, there's the battery for a start,not good, probably a fair bit of dodgy metals inside the case, a lot of different types of plastic, metals,wiring .........
Infrastructure - metal and plastic manufacture and assembly plants, transport, parts manufacture and sourcing of raw materials, advertising, large technical infrastructure to sell online.
Some bio-degradeable, some not, some not for a long time, and some dangerous.
A bit of a pong sounds fairly liveable with, don't it.........  |
At the small scale, the paper book technology is definitely less environmentally damaging & more sustainable. However, when we get to several million books... I'm not so sure anymore. 50,000 ereaders each with 150 books on them = 7.5 million books. Is the production of 50k ereaders more invasive than the infrastructure for the publication of 7.5 million paper books?
(Of course, the BPHs don't want to think about this, because they don't want to believe that ereaders will mean less paper book production.)
I'm not sure "environmental cost of ereaders" can be calculated on its own, since they are predicated on the existence of a complex and widespread computer industry.