[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Many of you are assuming that an e-book reader past its prime must be landfilled, making it a total loss and a 100% drain on the environment. This is not necessarily the case. E-book readers can also be recycled, and their raw materials re-used to make other devices. (True, by and large it is not happening yet, but the situation is improving day by day in most regions.)

And here's another important point to consider: You don't need a dedicated device to read e-books. An e-book can be read on your PC, your PDA, your cellphone... essentially, on a device that you already have and use. So the cost of a dedicated device does not have to be factored into the cost of e-books at all, any more than you'd assume every person who must go from point A to point B must use their own car (as opposed to public transportation).

At the user end, only the cost of energy expended specifically for e-book reading must be considered... and even then, if it is energy that is already being expended (such as on a PC already running and performing background tasks), there is essentially no extra cost. (And of course, that small energy expenditure can be supplied by solar cells, human power, etc.)