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Originally Posted by Gianfranco
However I disagree that there would be some narrow "tie" between eBooks and paper-books in respect to sustainability. You can sell an eBook arbitrarily many times without having to consider gathering new resources/reprinting/transporting.
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I might have worded it incorrectly - I mean I can't see it. There are too many hidden costs that I can't see and factors I can't calculate. Steve made some good points about pollution, but I don't see how they wouldn't apply to the heavy industry needed to produce high-tech electronics just the same. I don't know a lot about either.
I do agree that in a world where everyone has access to a ebook reader (oh, fabjous day! Callooh! Callay!) ebooks would be a clear winner for their infinite duplication with near-zero cost trait that you've mention. But even in a best-case scenario ebook readers will be a niche market for a long time to come, IMHO.
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Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
That does not mean they can't get better: Like other recycling efforts worldwide, there's still lots of room for improvement, and great potential for cutting back waste.
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For many of the more complex components the resources used to create them would have to become extremely scarce for it to be cost-effective to recycle them, and cost-effectiveness and/or scarcity is the only way you are going to get large corporations to do something there. The frames and large homogeneous parts are obviously much easier to recycle.