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Thread ID: 129851	2013-03-16 19:03:00	Is paper really dead?	Sanco (683)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
1333023	2013-03-21 22:21:00	And what about all the mining and oil and chemical processing etc and then the eventual resultant eWaste from making eReaders and tablet PCs? I can't see how getting a Kindle is going to be any better for the environment. At least trees can be replanted. There is obviously no perfect scenario, but there is always a better and worse ones. One reader (i don't have a kindle) potentially thousands of books, one paper book = one paper book. If you can't see that is cool with me.;)	Sanco (683)
1333024	2013-03-21 22:26:00	I can read a couple of dozen books before I need to charge the battery. Not a lot of travel costs getting the books either. Of course, if you walk to the bookshop (in bare feet) to get your books, there's only the delivery truck, printing process and the bookstore lights to cause you to worry about dwindling reserve consumption, plus a lot more. Rainy days are not really a problem for book buying either unless you have the tree-corpse varieties. I can "lend" my ebook to someone else with a reader, and I know it will be available to me again at the time I specified. This system is not yet perfected with your fat books made out of very junior coal. Also, if I have left my glasses elsewhere, I can simply enlarge the print; not too easily arranged with paper. Having the book read to me while I lie in the sun with a hat over my face is probably easier with the Kindle. For lighting the fire, I must admit your books win hands down.	R2x1 (4628)
1333025	2013-03-21 22:57:00	Paper ceased to be alive when the trees that make it were chopped down, so yes, it is dead. I wonder if a tree screams when it is cut down?	prefect (6291)
1333026	2013-03-22 01:56:00	There is obviously no perfect scenario, but there is always a better and worse ones. One reader (i don't have a kindle) potentially thousands of books, one paper book = one paper book. If you can't see that is cool with me.;) That assumes that the ecological impact of printing 1000 books is more than that of one eReader. But is that the case? What is actually involved in the manufacturing of each? I don't know exactly. An accurate comparison would be difficult.	Agent_24 (57)
1333027	2013-03-22 03:09:00	Logic would suggest that the manufacturing of one object, that is not of nuclear nature that is, would be less dispendious than a thousand items. But for the sake of our discussion I will write down what I personally know (or researched) of the processes of printing with synthetic inks and their impact to environment. This at the risk of being labelled a greenie :) Historically pulp and paper production has ranked among the most resource-intensive and highly polluting of all manufacturing industries. Besides fibre, the primary inputs into the paper making process are water, energy and chemicals. In the United States, the paper industry is the largest user per tonne of product of industrial process water (U.S. EPA 2002) and the third largest industrial consumer of energy (U.S. DOE). Also, papermaking is a very chemically intensive process. The pulp and paper industry ranks fourth among industrial sectors in emissions of Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) chemicals to water, and third in such releases to air. Paper’s impact on the environment continues even after it has been thrown away. As at early 2008 in the United States, paper and paperboard accounted for the largest portion (34percent) of the municipal waste stream, and 25 percent of discards after recovery of materials for recycling and composting. The problem with all this paper being thrown away is not just about landfill space. Once in a landfill, paper has the potential to decompose and produce methane, a greenhouse gas with 21 times the heat-trapping power of carbon dioxide (UNEP). Finally, transportation throughout the system also has significant environmental impacts. Harvested trees or recovered paper are transported to pulp mills, rolls of paper are transported to converters, and finished paper products are transported to wholesale distributors and then on to their retail point of sale. Transportation at each of these stages consumes energy and results in greenhouse gas emissions. Won't bore the heck out of you with the inks and the printing process I think, but let's say the above x10 times.	Sanco (683)
1333028	2013-03-22 03:19:00	How long you been out of the industry sanco. Things have vastly improved over the 10 years.	plod (107)
1333029	2013-03-22 04:01:00	How long you been out of the industry sanco. Things have vastly improved over the 10 years. 10 years plod. Everything improves with time - apart from me that is. :)	Sanco (683)
1333030	2013-03-23 02:04:00	I wonder if a tree screams when it is cut down? More so than when it's cut up. ;)	R2x1 (4628)
1333031	2013-03-23 07:08:00	I wonder if a tree screams when it is cut down? I have heard trees creak when cut down. Maybe this is their way of screaming.	Bobh (5192)
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