My Green Resolution for 2009 - Torpedo

2009 has just started and in celebration of the new year we start today a special project - "My Green Resolution for 2009".

Yes, this is resolutions time and many of these resolutions are related to the environment this year. We're talking about many people and businesses that are making a commitment to become more eco-friendly in 2009 and change in their lifestyle or in their business practices accordingly.

Want specifics? we were also curious to learn more about these resolutions, and decided to ask authors, publishers, bookstores and other partners we work with about their 2009 green resolutions. We also asked them to share with us any green wishes they have for the new year.

The result is a special project that will run throughout January on the blog and will present you with our partners' green resolutions for the new year. The first one we start with is Chris Flynn, the publisher of Falcon vs. Monkey, Falcon Wins, a Melbourne-based independent publishing company, which publishes Torpedo, a printed fiction quarterly.

Torpedo was praised by VICE UK as "A new quarterly compendium of short fiction and illustrated narrative storytelling coming out of Australia just seems a bit much. Don't those guys just shear sheep and moan about dingoes eating their babies all day before running people over after rolling out of the drive-thru 'bottle shop' with six crates of Tooheys New? Turns out: nope."

Torpedo is available exclusively through their site (that way they can give 50% of the very modest cover price to the contributors, who thus earn royalties for their work every quarter). And one tree is planted with Eco-Libris for each copy of Torpedo sold (the happy buyer will also receive Eco-Libris sticker).

Hello Chris. What is your green resolution for 2009?
My personal green resolution is to save water. The state of Victoria, where Melbourne is, has water reserves that are currently standing at 34% of capacity, and this is at the start of the summer. Individuals here use on average 139 litres per day and since I don't really want to live in a desert, I'm going to cut down on my shower time and buy a more efficient washing machine. Reserves have been getting lower every year and logging close to water catchement areas has not helped.

What's your green wish for 2009?
My green wish for 2009 is that the economies of first world nations become more oriented towards sustainability rather than consumption of resources. One can always hope..

Other greetings for the New Year?
I'd like to wish all the Eco-Libris supporters a healthy and green 2009 and hope that ever more publishers come on board to support the Eco-Libris drive towards sustainable publishing. Print is not dead - it just needs to become more aware of its impact!
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Any other plans for 2009 you would like to share with our readers?

I have somehow managed to muster a stellar line up of famous writers for Torpedo in 2009, so hopefully we will take off and be able to plant thousands of trees. I've got a few other tricks up my sleeve too, so watch this space (and by this space I mean this cyberspace, at falconvsmonkey.com. Shameless plug.)

Thanks, Chris!

You're welcome to keep following our blog this month as we'll have almost every day a new green pledge for 2009!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris
www.ecolibris.net