Paper or Plastic books?

I generally feel pretty good about my green street cred. I try to buy organic food, and I neatly sidestepped the paper-or-plastic dilemma in the checkout line by buying a couple of cloth bags and patting myself on the back. In terms of environmental friendliness, electronic books stack up well against paper books.

Then, I bought an electronic book (e-book) reader. I love the gadget—it's the size of a slim paperback and holds more than 200 books, magazines, and newspapers. I can even read blogs on it. When I showed off my e-reader around the office, I kept saying, "Just think how many trees I'll save!" I felt very eco-hip and started smirking at the poor saps reading the dead-tree edition of the Washington Post on the subway.

That worked fine until a bright co-worker pointed out that my fancy new piece of plastic might one day lie atop a pile of electronic junk in an Asian recycling facility, the kind where children pick through toxic components by hand.

And so the question remained—which is better, paper or plastic?

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http://pubs.acs.org/subscribe/journals/esthag-w/2008/may/tech/ee_ebooks.html