A study claims that the Amazon Kindle electronic reader is friendlier to the environment than the paper based books. After doing a life cycle analysis, it was found that carbon emissions from electronic books are far lower than traditional book publishing. But yes this is not without the drawbacks! For producing a Kindle, you have to leave out to the atmosphere 168 kilograms of carbon dioxide while it is only 7.46 kilograms for a book. Electronic readers need electricity to run too! Plus there is the growing problem of electronic waste which seems to be forgotten by many. Amazon said that it will establish a recycling program for the Kindle and its battery by mail to reduce electronic waste. Intuitively, the basic conclusion of the Cleantech Group analysis makes sense: the more you reduce your use of paper media in a single electronic device, the less you'll pollute by harvesting and shipping physical goods.

But as with many proposed advantabes to environmental problems, there are the disadvantages as well. It all depends on how you use the e-reader. If you continue to buy books and print periodicals and don’t recycle the product, the environmental impact could potentially be negative.

[Cnet]