Greening your Reading
By Karina | November 18, 2009
I’ve mentioned it here and there, but I feel I should state for the record: I am a big reader. Proof: when I was a kid and got into trouble, I was restricted from reading. In contrast, my brother was restricted from watching TV. (The problem was he’d always try to talk me into watching TV so he could glom onto the program, but would never agree to turn the pages of my books for me.)
So of course when I stumbled on Eco Libris, I was interested - the premise is that you buy carbon offsets for your BOOKS. Because as they say on their web site: “every book was once a tree… now you can plant a tree for every book you read.”
For starters I liked Eco Libris because they were all about books. I love books too! then I checked their vision page and saw this familiar sounding statement:
Let’s start with the bottom line: we believe in providing people with easy and affordable ways to take responsibility for their actions and go green. We don’t believe in preaching doom and gloom. It’s not our style. We do believe in taking action and in the power of small changes to make a big impact.
OK, likes books, AND not fans of doom and gloom? Excellent! Now, the impact that Eco Libris is attacking is the effects of cutting down trees to make the virgin paper that most books are printed on. Again, from their website:
More than 30 Million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone.
We would like to see more (and eventually all) books printed in an environmental friendly manner on recycled paper. If virgin paper is being used, then it should only be from certified forests. You can help make this happen by writing publishers and encouraging them to do the right thing.
So what you do is buy a batch of stickers (at about $1/book, depending on the volume you purchase) and Eco Libris plants trees in developing nations where they could use the extra forestation and ecosystem support. You can read about the groups they support in other countries here, and why they are supporting them - be it rainforest reforestation or creating sustainable timber industries.
Now, when I first started working for a living, I bought books like they were going out of style. It didn’t work out well with my NYC apartment lifestyle (no room for a dedicated library, for example) but I did my best to keep the books out of my roommates way. However, when I quit that job to go to graduate school, my full stop in paychecks lead me to really get in the habit of using a library for my reading needs. Lately I just buy books that are hard to find or that I really really love. And Jenn has written about how she prefers to buy used books. But I still have a bunch of books - I donated many many books before I moved, and right now I’m sitting in a room with a book case holding an estimated 400 books on it. And that’s just the books in the in this room. So the big questions are: would it be worth it to buy these stickers for my existing books? Just the new ones?
And really what I most want your input on, dear readers: would my local library be mad if I put these stickers on the fly leaf? What do you think?
[[bookshelf pic by flickr user ravenofdreams via creative commons license.]]
Related posts:
- Easy Peasy Tip: Share Reading Material!
- Used Book Love
- Easy Peasy Tip: Visit your local library!
- Tiny Choices Giveaway: “EcoDog”
- Greening Moving Boxes
- Greening Your Dating
- Q&A: Real vs. Fake Christmas Tree?
Topics: Books, General, Home |
Yeah, I think the library might not like it too much if you put the stickers in the books, but I like the concept!
I bought a Kindle the day they came out 2 years ago, and aside from a couple of cookbooks, I haven’t brought any paper books into my house, and the Kindle has kept me happily stocked with books. Sure, an electronic device has its own environmental implications, but it’s the easiest solution for me. The branch system of Libraries in Chicago just doesn’t work very well for me - you have to order books from your locally inconveniently located branch, and then they will arrive 2-8 weeks later…and I’m impatient, so the Kindle is perfect.
I’ve thought about the kindle, and I *do* have a couple of e-reader apps for my iphone that I use, but generally only for free books. I’m just in the habit of getting my books from the library, it’s kind of hard to pay full price for them now!
I think the library is awesome, even for books that you know you’ll read again. We save a fortune by ordering absolutely everything from the library–movies too! Yes you have to wait sometimes, but every other aspect (save a ton of money and natural resources, don’t have to provide shelf space for hundreds of books, and now no carbon offsets!) more than make up for the wait time. You can get used to it even if you find it initially wearisome to wait. We always find it a bit exciting to see what has come in for us this week!
Yeah, don’t put stickers in library books. Neat idea though, and I think it would be a great idea to sticker books that you are going to “release” through Book Crossing or exchange through Paperback Swap, just so other people discover it.
Myself, I buy so few new books that I probably wouldn’t use Eco Libris, but it’s a good idea for those who do. Personally, I just can’t handle e-readers - I want to actually hold the book and turn the pages! So I’ll stick to exchanging/buying used.
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