Happy Birthday: Eco-Libris is one year old!

I hope you all enjoyed a joyful 4th of July. We also had our own birthday celebration this week. Yes, Eco-Libris just turned one year old!

Wow. I can't believe a year passed since it all started..This was a very exciting year for all of us at Eco-Libris. We started one year ago with the vision of making reading more sustainable. We came with a lot of enthusiasm and big love for books and the environment. We wanted to establish a green company that will become an agent of change in the book industry.

One year later I am proud to report that we have balanced out so far 50,005 books, which results in 65,865 new trees that are being planted with our planting partners in developing countries!

And what a busy year it was! Here's a reminder of some of main things that we had on the first year:

• We worked with publishers such as Kedzie Press and BookHouse that wanted to green up titles they published by planting trees for each and every printed copy of them. We also established other collaborations with publishers like Process and Barefoot Books.
  


• We initiated our bookstores program that gives book buyers the opportunity to plant a tree for the book they just bought at the bookstore at the counter. We have now 22 bookstores in the program from the U.S., Canada and Ireland, including Strand Book Store (NY), Hue-Man Bookstore (NY), San Francisco State University (CA) and Black Bear Books (NC).
  
  
• We worked with many eco-conscious readers from all over the world that balanced out through our website the books they read or buy by planting trees.
  


• We collaborated with many authors that wanted to plant trees for their books and used our "One tree planted for this book” stickers (printed on recycled paper) when selling books directly from their website , or on book signing or launch events.
  


• We had a joint campaign with Raincoast Books, the Canadian publisher and distributor.
  


• We started a partership with Chegg, the textbook rental service that plant a tree for every textbook students rent with this great service.
  


• We initiated a collaboration with BookMooch, the online book swapping community, and did with them a great promotion of green books on Earth Day.
  


• We became a member of the Sustainable Business Network (SBN) of Greater Philadelphia.
  


• We worked hard to increase the awareness in the need of change in the book industry, through this blog, by offering resources on our website, interviews in the media, starting communication with local organizations of publishers and bookstores, joint work with literature events, participation in green fairs, and establishing connections with libraries, green organizations and companies and anyone who wanted to learn more why and how reading should be made more sustainable.
  


• And of course, we started this blog, that in time became an important source of news and views in the field of green reading. We prepared special green book guides, reviewed many green-themed books, covered many relevant issues, had special coverage on a report on he industry's footprint, started 'my green bookshelf' series and mainly had a lot of fun!

And what's next? we have a lot of of work in front of us! We are going to work harder on the second year to balance out more and more books, expand globally and bring the change we're looking for - make books greener and move towards sustainable reading!

I would like to take this opportunity and thank everyone involved in our efforts - from the dedicated eco-conscious readers that balance out their books with us, through our business partners that take action to support the environment all the way to our wonderful planting partners that are doing such a great job in planting the trees in developing countries.

And I'm happy to add a photo that is fresh from the oven. It just arrived from our planting partner AIR that worked last month on planting trees in Guatemala, some of them with the support of Eco-Libris, as you can see from the photo below that were provided to by AIR.

AIR volunteers plant trees that were purchased with the support of Eco-Libris in Itzapa, Guatemalla. The species planted are Pino Triste (Pseudotrobus); Fresno (Fraxinus Undei); Ilamo, aka Aliso (Alnus jourulensis); and Gravilea (Gravilea Robusta).

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!