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Originally Posted by axel77
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eBooks are a a cool thing. But paper is also a great technology. Paper is made out of 100% renewable materials. Paper is more sustainable to aging than any electonic data material.
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*IF* you control humidity levels *THEN* it can be durable. To the contrary, paper is very fragile as well know. What happened to paper in World Trade Center attack? Not to mention the difficulty of creating a backup copy of paper (copying, transport to another location, storage, etc)
Quote:
Originally Posted by axel77
Paper is cheap in production.
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The be 100% correct this was true in the past. However, you should keep in mind that from pulp to paper to printing a lot of energy is used. When energy was very cheap then paper was cheap. Of course, that is changing and paper production is becmoing more expensive every day.
I came accross a news item about a mill which had its own hydro plant for power. At one point they just stopped the machines and sold power as it was more lucrative than processing wood.
Bottom line is that paper may still be relatively cheap, but will only keep getting more and more expensive.
Quote:
Originally Posted by axel77
Paper can be recycled to 100% with zero waste..
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The same problem. Collection and recycling use energy which is becoming expensive. So it *CAN* be recycled but in practice it may be happening far leff often that we'd like.
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Originally Posted by axel77
Paper does not require the user to have additional infrastructure to read it. I wouldn't carry paper to the grave all too fast. And to say just because something is *newer* than paper does not make it "better" by default. Like any possible would just take us futher away from stone age and thus more advanced ..
Society WILL have to change to sustainable ressources at some point. And no this does NOT take us back to stoneage, if we manage to make the right decissions at the right time. Currently it just doesn't look like it, humanity as whole has enough foresight...
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The only way to avoid going back to stone age is to become much more economical in the use of energy. This is where most of the analysis fail miserably.
Consider the existing paper processing system:
1) forestry machines = gasoline/diesel
2) mill = electricity
3) transport = diesel/electricity
They all use either diesel/gasoline fuel from large processing planets (refinaries) or huge amounts of electricity from large power planets. As well all know all these plants are under pressure and cannot supply enough. Both refinaries are runnig near max capacity and nuclear planets, coal plants, etc. all generators are overloaded. China already has restrictions and rationing. So clearly the present paper processing system doesn't have enough energy available and what is available will become more and more expensive.
Now consider an eReader. You still need a plant of some sort to build it, fair enough. However, to recharge it a small solar panel is sufficient to recharge it in a day. So while it may still use electricity, you could actually generate it yourself because it needs so little. Even your home computer, router, etc. can be powered from your solar panels and wind turbines.
In other words, eBooks and eReaders are much more sustainable and easier to operate long term than paper.
In fact, forget books. What about nespapers. How much of a newspaper is *ACTUALLY* read on average???? I tend to find so little good content, I may read only 5% of a newspaper. So you are making all this paper and printing so many newspapers every day to end up consuming a mere 10%-20% of it!?!?!
It is much easier and cheaper to waste eNewspaper electrons than pNwespaper paper!
I also don't like new technology being promoted for simply being "new". That is a fair criticisam. However, when taking a critical look at a new technology like eBooks one should apply the same standards to older technology - paper.
There are massive wastes occuring at every step of paper processing. The main problem is that so much paper is simply never consumed even once!!!! Why is that problem not being examined, let alone addressed!!!!