Great report Sonja, but a couple of things missed:
1. LED lights are much more environmentally friendly and really taking over now, as well as being much safer to use than the CFLs are.
Also the paper in printed books can be recycled into new books etc.
2. A printed book has a life span of many decades and once it's produced it costs no more for another person to use or read it. Yet an electronic copy has to be electronically transferred between systems and cost a bit in power etc to be read each time you do or for each person who reads it. Also many electronic documents from the 1980s can no longer be used due to the systems used then no longer being in use. It's hoped the new e-book styles will stay around a long, but think of how many Beta videos are now useless due to the hardware to sue them not being available, and we may see the same sort of result when this current format war between iPad, Nook, and Kindle reaches a conclusion.
On a related issue, I'd like to know what's going on to recycle the materials used in e-waste. Years ago I worked for a company that maintained 20 year old, and older, mainframes and we were often asked to dispose of the very old gear the clients were replacing. One of my tasks was to arrange that and I actually made a profit from the e-waste disposal of old IBM mainframes by first recovering the brass, copper, and gold from the systems and then putting the remaining metal through for recycling as well.
