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Reading printed newspapers is environmentally superior to the online equivalent, but only if you read them for longer than half an hour a day.

That's the conclusion of a study at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, which attempted to calculate the environmental load of reading a newspaper in various formats.

But the research found that e-paper was better still, only creating a third of the environmental load of either print or web consumption.

The greatest environmental impact of printed versions comes from paper production. For the web, it's electricity production, while for e-paper titles, it's the production of the terminal, according to the report.

The good news for the print industry is that print and online become comparable at half an hour per day of newspaper consumption, while beyond that paper has the edge.

However, reading a newspaper on e-paper for 30 minutes is the equivalent of only 10 minutes online.

Researcher Åsa Moberg said: "The products' contribution to different sorts of environmental impact differs as well but, in general, the paper and internet newspapers with a longer reading time burden the environment more than e-paper and the internet version with a shorter reading time."