DUMBO's powerHouse will be openning a new store in Park Slope, Brooklyn

Good news from Brooklyn! The Brooklyn Paper reported earlier today that "DUMBO’s powerHouse Books is planning to open an outpost in a former video rental shop on Eighth Avenue in October — marking the first high-profile bookstore to come to the neighborhood since Barnes and Noble set up shop on Seventh Avenue in 1997."

This is certainly a bold move, as even Park Slope doesn't seem to be immune to the unfortunate trend of bookstore closings - the neighborhood once had four booksellers on Seventh Avenue alone, but now has just two.

There might be a reason yet to be optimistic, as Ezra Goldstein, co-owner of the Community Bookstore on Seventh Avenue, offers a more positive perspective on the state of bookstores in Park Slope:

“Our business is way up despite Nooks, Kindles, and Amazon. We now share that literary cachet with many more neighborhoods, but people in Park Slope still love books.”

Will that be good enough to justify the opening of another bookstore? powerHouse hopes so and so do we!

The bookstore is expected to be opened on October and will be located at 1111 Eighth Ave. between 11th and 12th streets in Park Slope. Check www.powerhouseon8th.com for further updates.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

The Environmental Paper Network has released a new version of the Paper Calculator

We received some exciting news from our friends at the Environmental Paper Network (EPN) last week. They have just released a new version of their Paper Calculator to better assist paper buyers with measuring the environmental impact of their paper usage and shifting to paper that supports climate and endangered forest protection.

The Paper Calculator is a very important tool. It helps individuals and businesses make better and smarter decisions that are based on facts and figures rather than just on guestimations and intuitions. EPN's Paper Calculator is the original and most independent paper life-cycle impact estimator available, helping you to compare factors such as wood use, net energy use, GHG emissions, water consumption and so on.

What I really like about the Paper Calculator is that it is a very user-friendly tool. Now the improvements are supposed to make it even more easier to use. In addition, the new calculator includes updated industry data and technical input from diverse stakeholders. The Paper Calculator is made available to users for free by the Environmental Paper Network thanks to its coalition members, its supporters, and through Power User premium sponsorships.

The key improvements in version 3.2 include:

• More completely capturing the life cycle water use of both recycled and virgin fiber based on consultation with industry associations and life cycle experts
• Updated national average data on mill performance
• Calculates the environmental savings of both post-consumer and pre-consumer recycled content
• Updated decomposition rates for each of the paper grades based on new data

The Paper Calculator is committed to independence and transparency and a detailed documentation of the Paper Calculator version 3.2 methodology can be found at http://calculator.environmentalpaper.org/resources_and_tools.

You can check it out and try it for yourself at www.papercalculator.org.

Finally, one more word about the EPN - the Environmental Paper Network is a coalition of non-profit organizations working together to protect the earth’s climate and endangered forests by transforming the production and consumption of paper products. The Steering Committee of the Environmental Paper Network is Canopy, Climate for Ideas, Conservatree, Dogwood Alliance, ForestEthics, Green America, Green Press Initiative, National Wildlife Federation, Natural Resources Council of Maine, and Rainforest Action Network. Learn more about the Environmental Paper Network at www.environmentalpaper.org.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

My article today on Triple Pundit about the settlement between Gibson Guitars and the DOJ

Here's an update on a new article I published earlier today on Triple Pundit with the latest news on the settlement between the Justice Department and Gibson Guitars following the accusations against Gibson of violations of the Lacey Act.

The article is entitled 'Gibson Guitars Settles in Lawsuit Over Illegal Wood Sourcing'. Here's the first part of the article:

If only life were like the Olympic Games – while in the Olympics participants either win or lose, life is full of compromise and most of the time there are no clear winners or losers. This seems to be the case in the fight between the Department of Justice and Gibson Guitars over whether the company imported wood illegally from Madagascar and India, violating the Lacey Act, a law requiring that all wood products and plants imported into the U.S. come from legal sources. This case, which made the headlines due to two raids on Gibson’s factory and accusations that Gibson is persecuted because of political reasons, ended last week in a settlement between the two sides.

To read the full article go to http://www.triplepundit.com/2012/08/gibson-guitars-lawsuit-lacey-act/

Links to other articles I wrote for Triple Pundit can be found at http://www.triplepundit.com/author/raz-godelnik/

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant trees for your books!

Eco-Libris offers monthly subscription option for green readers with large libraries!

I'd like to remind you about one of the options available on our website - monthly subscription.

If you have a big library at home and you want to green it up one bookshelf or bookcase at a time, balancing out 5 or 10 books every month on regular basis, can be a good fit for you.

The process is very easy and similar to one-time purchase: Visit our website (www.ecolibris.net) and go to the subscription page, where you choose how many books you want to balance out each month. Then just click on the 'Buy' bottom and complete the payment process on the PayPal page. And that's it!

Then every month we'll balance out for you the number of books you chose by planting trees in developing countries with our planting partners. You will receive a confirmation email from PayPal following each monthly payment as well as our "one tree planted for this book" stickers.

And that's not all, if you're also a member at BookMooch, you will receive 1 bookmooch point for every 10 books you balance out!

If and when you'll decide that you want to suspend your subscription, you will be able to do it easily and quickly on PayPal website.

We are very happy to offer this option to all the eco-conscious readers out there who want to green up many of their books but want to do gradually. If you have any questions about the subscription option, please feel free to email me at: raz [at] ecolibris [dot] net.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!