Quote:
Originally Posted by nekokami
While I agree wholeheartedly with your last point, and still think a voracious reader comes out ahead with ebooks, I think we would also need to take into account the facts that plastics manufacture also involves wastes being dumped into local watersheds and very likely is powered by a coal-fired plant.
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Of course. As it happens, the water-use and recycling process of the average electronics plant (even outside of the U.S.) is far superior over the average paper-producing plant, by orders of magnitude: Paper production involves soaking vats of chemicals, whereas electronics systems are much more careful and frugal with water and chemical use.
Finally, while a single device may go through more chemicals and materials than a single book, the economy of numbers still puts reading devices on top, as you end up producing in aggregate far less electronic devices than books.