My article about the book industry's key elements for green future on Vulpes Libris

Vulpes Libris invited me to take part and write an article for their Environment Week, and so I happily did. The article is about few key elements that can significantly impact the future of the book industry and determine how green it will be.

You can find it here - http://vulpeslibris.wordpress.com/2008/09/09/raz-godelnik-from-eco-libris-talks-about-the-future-of-the-book/.

The whole Environment Week is full with great articles and topics and you are welcome to check them out. Here is the program of this week:

MONDAY: Naturalist Scott Weidensaul travels the world seeking lost species in The Ghost with Trembling Wings, which Jackie finds riveting.

TUESDAY: We have a contribution from Raz Godelnik, CEO of Eco Libris, a company specialising in sustainable reading.

WEDNESDAY: Mary talks to Mark Lynas, author of Six Degrees about climate change, the need to respond to environmental challenges, his frustration with global warming deniers and the power of books.

THURSDAY: We have a guest piece from Lizzie Rushton, a geographer writing about Christian environmentalism based on controversial interpretations of the Book of Revelation.

FRIDAY: To raise our spirits, Mary is back again with a review of Andrew Simms’ (ed.) Do Good Lives have to Cost the Earth? (The answer, in conclusion, being no.)

SATURDAY: Leena reviews Nature’s Child: Encounters with Wonders of the Natural World in which John Lister-Kaye, nature writer and conservationist, writes about bringing up her young daughter to have a close relationship with nature.

SUNDAY: Some book recommendations from The Soil Association.

Also, don't forget to enter the giveaway of How Can I Stop Climate Change? here!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

Green Options: Scientists Say Forests Are a Possible Carbon Storage Solution

As part of Eco-Libris' ongoing content partnership with Green Options Media, we feature a post that was originally published by Ariel Schwartz on September 8 on CleanTechnica. Today's post is about a new research that checked the capability of forests to store carbon.




Maybe one of the best things we can do it offset our CO2 is also one of the simplest: stop cutting down trees. In a recent issue of Bioscience, Ohio State University Professor Peter Curtis wrote that carbon storage in Midwestern forests could offset greenhouse gas emissions from two-thirds of the nearby population. Maintaining the forests could even increase storage capacity in the future.

Curtis and his team based their calculations on measurements taken between 1999 and 2005. The measurements, which factored in climate, history, and tree type, showed that a forested region in northern Michigan could potentially store over 350,000 tons of carbon each year. That adds up to about 62 percent of the region's emissions.

Interestingly, the majority of the CO2 stored in the researchers' forested region is located in wood mass and soil organic matter. The remaining CO2 is taken in by stem wood, leaves, and debris.

Curtis' team also noticed that younger trees hold more carbon than older ones, but aging trees have younger trees underneath them waiting to rejuvenate the forest. They hope that their discovery will help persuade policymakers to leave both old and young forests be.

I doubt that we'll stop cutting down forests anytime soon, as humans are regrettably shortsighted. But storing CO2 in forests is a great natural option to potentially dangerous alternatives like carbon capture and storage.

More Posts on Carbon Dioxide:

• World's First Carbon Capture Pilot Launching Next Week


• New Study Says Commercial Carbon Capture Unlikely by 2020