Many corporations, educational institutions, and publishers have made efforts in recent years to shift from paper-based reading to electronic and online reading in order to save paper. According to this logic, paper is gleaned from trees, which must be replenished, and the energy required to recycle paper waste is another blow to the environment as well as to organizations' finances. However, researcher Emma Gardsdale sees more gray area in the issue. First, in order for e-reading to be practical, tablets and e-readers are required. Because these devices have a limited lifespan of one to four years, they create e-waste which puts poisons such as arsenic, lead, and poly-brominated flame retardants into landfills, where they can leach into water supplies and soil. Second, e-reading has a hidden cost: the electricity required to power servers, computers and mobile devices. Gardsdale also points out that the ecological balance between paper reading and e-reading depends significantly on the amount of reading that one does. An e-reader, for example, will have a smaller carbon footprint than paper only if it is used for at least a certain volume of reading. Gardsdale argues that the current all-encompassing enthusiasm for the ecological promise of electronic reading isn't the quick ecological fix it may seem to be. Over the long term, she says, both paper and electronic reading will likely have a place in our lives. Each method's role will depend on the energy-saving and waste-minimizing technologies that become available in the coming years, and on whether corporations that manufacture mobile reading devices are willing to take responsibility for the impact of their devices' life cycles.