I have a book entitled “Cradle to Cradle” by William McDonough. It is apparantly made out of polypropylene, and the claim made by DuraBook and McDonough is that it can be “upcycled”, e.g., melted down and turned into a higher or equal quality product ad infinitum. I don’t know anything about chemicals, but this seems a bit odd. If you melt it, turn it into a book, melt it, turn it into a book a million times isn’t the material going to deteriorate?
I would have thought so, but the strength requirements for a book page is not great, so maybe a bit of deterioration can be tolerated. I would be more concerned about getting rid of all the ink and additives in the polymer as well.
I cant find anything on the web on durabook, the plastic technology cited apart from what you have already stated
here is a wired article on it (NSFW, interestingly). the guy who is behind it is named Charles Melcher