Ironically, a
Treehugger article points out that because of the present economic downturn/crash/meltdown, waste paper that used to go to China for recycling is no longer wanted there... which may result in tons of waste paper being landfilled or burned, instead of being recycled. Other scrap materials are no longer in demand... they are not considered financially viable to recycle.
I confess I didn't realize how much of the world's waste was apparently being recycled by China, but I also find it hard to believe that recycling cannot be economically viable everywhere...
What does it mean for the e-book industry when paper is not considered a resource worth recycling? Could paper producers be forced to dispose of their own trash... and thereby encourage them to cut back on paper production? Will we end up burning waste paper for fuel? Or maybe we have "Soylent Pulp" to look forward to...