Are eReaders Really Green?

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by K. Molen

Ah, but by buying those unread books as e-books, those trees didn't have to die, and can remain in the forest eating the CO2.

But the trees won't be replaced if paper usage drops... trees for paper are planted (and replanted) specifically for that purpose... no paper then no need for tree plantations for pulp so land use changes probably for the worse from CO2 sink point of use...

[applesauce]

Green is important to me as I have kids. I am not a nutty tree hugger, and consider myself fairly well informed ie I knew how lame it is to purchase an electric car and think it is doing the green thing. I have a policy of recycling things I have finished with. This policy means I will sell off anything I can make more than $50 everything else goes on freecycle. I like to think if it hits freecycle that when they finish with it it is less likely to end up as land fill. Charity stores where I live take nothing that needs power for safety reasons so freecycle makes a lot of sense. We found a local guy building computers for free for the elderly in our area via freecycle so all comptuer bits go there. We found a lady assisting disadvantaged kids complete high school to go to uni and passed on school books uniforms etc. It really is a matter of a few minutes and as I have said we are not wacky tree huggers and do consume lots of new technology and products.

applesauce

[CommonReader]

The figures look quite implausible to me. He claims that the total number of books sold in the US annually is only 25 million. For a country of 300 million people that figure looks nonsensical. A short google search brought up figures of > 3 billion books sold annually, which looks much more plausible. If someone who has supposedly worked extensively in the industry gets such a figure wrong to such an extent, then how reliable are the other figures?

Anyway, looking at my total ecological impact the ebook reader is probably negligible.
As to the life span of batteries: I have used my Sony Ericsson mobile phone for over four years now and I haven't yet seen any noticeable deterioration of battery life.

[Belfaborac]

I recently replaced my (roughly) five year old Sony Ericsson phone because the battery performance dropped sharply over a fairly short period of time, to a level where a daily charge was insufficient to keep it alive even with no use at all.