[Alexander Turcic]

"The Sony Reader is going to save a lot of trees; it might even save the world, actually." —Yves Béhar

This might be true for the Sony Reader if you use it to read your book. What they forget is the resources you need to manufacture E Ink devices, the resources you need to go online and download the e-books, etc. The Institute for Future Studies and Technology Assessment (IZT) in Berlin, Germany, found that "electronic paper has a much greater environmental impact than conventional newspapers in the business models that companies and experts have been using up to now."

You can download the two German studies from here:

• E-Paper - Erste Abschätzung der Umweltauswirkungen
• Dematerialisierung durch E-Paper?