Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Raincoast Books and Eco-Libris are collaborating in a green campaign: Buy a book, Plant a a tree


We are very excited to update you on our joint campaign with Raincoast Books, a leading Canadian book company, which is taking place this month for the second year in a row: 'Buy a Book, Plant a Tree'.

Here are the details:

Raincoast Books is best known in green circles as the Canadian publisher of the green editions of the latest Harry Potter books. Currently its provides full-service Canadian representation to a wide range of publishers from the US, the UK and Canada, had a wholesale division (BookExpress) that is dedicated to supplying bestselling frontlist and backlist titles to bookstores and retailers across Canada and owns Publishers Group Canada, which distributes titles from over 100 independently owned book publishing houses from all over the world.

Following our successful partnership last year, Raincoast Books signed up this year Canadian retailers who will be selling a wide range of environmentally themed books starting this month. These books come with Eco-Libris stickers stating that one tree will be planted for each one of them. Participating bookstores include independent bookstores located in British Colombia, Nova Scotia and Ontario (a full list can be found at http://raincoast.com/green).

This year we have 257 new trees that will be planted following this joint campaign! And all together our partnership with Raincoast Books has resulted so far in 4,776 new trees that are planted on behalf of Canadian readers with our planting partners in Central America and Africa.

This project is part of an ongoing effort by Raincoast to work towards being a greener company. Here's some more information about these efforts from the company's website: Raincoast has joined Markets Initiative (CDN) and Green Press Initiative (USA), organizations working with publishers, printers and paper mills to reduce the environmental impact of the publishing industry.

Until the closure of the publishing program in January 2008, Raincoast published fiction, non-fiction and children’s books. Over 95% of Raincoast’s text-based books are printed on ancient forest friendly paper. In June 2003, Raincoast printed the Canadian edition of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix on 100% ancient-forest-free, chlorine-free, 100% post-consumer recyled paper. To date, Raincoast has saved over 75,185 old-growth trees.

Raincoast was awarded the 2003 Ethics in Action Award and the 2004 Ernst & Young Entrepreneurial Award.

We are very excited to be continue our joint work with Raincoast Books and look forward to many more years of promoting together green-themed books and the need to make a positive impact on the earth.

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