My Green Resolution for 2009 - Angela Wieck of EcoBrain

Our quest for 2009 green resolutions and greetings in going online today. We're very happy to have with us today Angela Wieck, co-founder of EcoBrain, an independent eBook distributor and the only online retailer of eBooks dedicated to the environment and environmentally friendly living.

We partner with EcoBrain, which offers its customers to plant trees with Eco-Libris.

Hello Angela. What is your green resolution for 2009?

1. Get tough with garbage - I am trying hard to think about what I put into the garbage and see if there is a way to reuse the item. It is so easy to throw stuff away. I’ve started keeping a pile that can be donated or given to someone in need. And using old stuff to make a craft pile that the kids can use. They find great fun making things with old bits of yarn, buttons, cardboard, and so on.

2. Use green products at home - Over the past year I have eliminated a lot of toxic chemicals that had been in use in my house. I didn’t realize that most laundry detergent is a petroleum product! So this journey continues.

3. Educate my children about green living - They remind us when we lapse because they have great memories and want to do the right thing. I left the water running between veggie washing and my son kindly reminded me to turn it off. Children make great coaches.

4. Continue to educate about the benefits of eBooks - We all know that books come from trees, but it goes much further when you add in trees being cut down, pollution to create the paper, fuel to deliver and so on. If we choose to read a few eBooks per year rather than buy paper books the difference we can make would be enormous.

What's your green wish for 2009?
World peace of course! Read eBooks! And another wish for 2009 is that manufacturers will produce less packaging; and that we consumers will not want it. A few years ago I was in Germany and noticed that at the drugstore most bottles do not come in a cardboard box. When I asked about this I was told that manufacturers are charged extra if they provide a product with unnecessary packaging. They are way ahead of us on that!

Other greetings for the New Year?
EcoBrain would like to wish everyone a happy and healthy 2009. Let’s continue to make this world a better place.
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Any other plans for 2009 you would like to share with our readers?

EcoBrain continues to offer great eBook titles at great prices to our customers. We love to hear feedback, so let us know what you think and if there is something you’d like to see. Happy New Year!!!

Thanks, Angela!

To learn more about the eBooks offered at EcoBrain, you are welcome to visit EcoBrain's website at http://www.ecobrain.com


More articles related to EcoBrain:

The eBooks that will help your business go green!

eBooks - A Greener Choice or Not?

Green Options: Want to Green Your Addiction to Books? Buy Ebooks

So far on "My Green Resolution for 2009":

Author Amy Guth of the Pilcrow Lit Fest and So New Publishing

Dr. Anne Hallum of the International Alliance for Reforestation (AIR)

Surendra James Conti of East West Bookstore

Jennifer Taylor of GreetQ

Bill Roth, author of "On Empty (Out of Time)"

Vonda Schaefer of Valley Books

Madeline Kaplan, author of "Planet Earth Gets Well"

Chris Flynn of Torpedo

Edain Duguay of Wyrdwood Publications


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

The eBooks that will help your business go green!

In the last couple of weeks we're busy with recommendations on great green-themed books. Today we're focusing on green-themed eBooks. We're happy to host Angela Wieck from EcoBrain who recommends on few green eBooks for businesses.

EcoBrain, eBook Distributor, Provides Resources for Businesses to Go Green

EcoBrain, the #1 eBook marketplace for books on green living for individuals and businesses highlights three eBooks to help businesses in their quest to create corporate sustainability.

A lot of attention has been given to the growth of eBooks recently, with eBooks reportedly rising by 58.9% and most categories of paper books declining. EcoBrain would like to now focus attention on some titles that can help businesses do a better job of going green.

The Next Sustainability Wave: Building Boardroom Buy-in, by Bob Willard ($16.95)

It provides a compelling business case and emphasizes the importance of how sustainability is presented to corporate leaders - using the right language, and avoiding threats to the status quo that provoke habitual corporate defense mechanisms -- the book applies effective selling techniques to reposition sustainability strategies as a means to achieving existing corporate ends, rather than as a separate priority to worry about. It sells sustainability as a solution, a business strategy, and a catalyst for business transformation.

Another excellent title is Dancing with the Tiger: Learning Sustainability Step by Natural Step, by Brian Nattrass and Mary Altomare ($22.95).

For corporations, communities and other organizations, the choreography of the dance toward sustainability has been systematized by The Natural Step: a framework that provides the science, analysis, methodologies and tools to use in the quest for sustainability.

Dancing with the Tiger presents the stories of individuals, teams and organizations learning about change and sustainability, and then acting on that learning. Case studies include some of the most successful companies and communities in North America:

• Nike: its struggles, victories and setbacks on the road to sustainability

• Starbucks: the tension of modeling corporate responsibility with alarming growth

• CH2MHill: its gradual evolution from environmental to sustainability engineering

• Whistler: grappling with the paradox of sustainability in a high profile resort town

• as well as Home Depot, Norm Thomson Outfitters, the municipalities of Seattle and Santa Monica, and others.

Firms of Endearment: How World-Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose, by Rajendra Sisodia, David Wolfe, Jagdish Sheth ($20.12)

It's a fact: People are increasingly searching for higher meaning in their lives, not just more possessions. This trend is transforming the marketplace, the workplace, and the very soul of capitalism. Increasingly, today's most successful companies are those who've brought love, joy, authenticity, empathy, and soulfulness into their businesses: companies that deliver emotional, experiential, and social value, not just profits. Firms of Endearment illuminates this: the most fundamental transformation in capitalism since Adam Smith.

It's not a book about corporate social responsibility: it's about building companies that can sustain success in a radically new era. It's about great companies like IDEO and IKEA, Commerce Bank and Costco, Wegmans and Whole Foods: how they've earned powerful loyalty and affection from all their stakeholders, while achieving stock performance that is truly breathtaking. It's about gaining "share of heart," not just share of wallet. It's about aligning the interests of all your stakeholders, not just juggling them.

It's about understanding how the "new rules of capitalism" mirror the self-actualization focus of our aging society. It's about building companies that leave the world a better place. Most of all, it's about why you must do all this, or risk being left in the dust... and how to get there from wherever you are now.

Not only does EcoBrain offer titles for businesses, but individuals as well. A recommended title for individuals is Global Profit AND Global Justice: Using Your Money to Change the World, by Deb Abbey ($11.95).

Although debate still rages about the merits of globalization, the fact remains that it is inevitable. But instead of people expending their energies on fighting the global economy, we may be much better off trying to shape it. Global Profit AND Global Justice shows how you can use your money creatively to change the world for the better. It aims to empower people to leverage capital for progressive social and environmental change. Arguing that the marketplace is a viable forum for individuals to effect such change, it shows that consumers and investors already have many tools at their disposal to help ensure that the benefits of globalization are distributed equitably.

EcoBrain.com offers thousands of titles, from hundreds of top publishers, about the environment. EcoBrain’s offers eBooks on the environment, sustainable living, cookbooks, biographies, kids’ books, how-to guides, green architecture titles, organic gardening, composting, fiction and more.

Book reviewers and journalists are encouraged to contact EcoBrain for access to complimentary copies.

Angela Wieck

Sales & Marketing

EcoBrain

angela@EcoBrain.com

eBooks - A Greener Choice or Not?

Today we're happy to host Angela Wieck, co-founder of EcoBrain (www.EcoBrain.com), an independent eBook distributor and the only online retailer of eBooks dedicated to the environment and environmentally friendly living. We partner with EcoBrain, which offers its customers to plant trees with Eco-Libris), and today we have the pleasure to bring you an article of Angela about one of the most interesting issues in the book industry - eBooks vs. paper books: which option is greener?

eBooks - A Greener Choice or Not?

Lately there has been quite a bit of debate about whether eBooks really are greener than paper books or not. This surprised me because I thought it was obvious. However, the more I read, the more I wanted to learn. My conclusion is that yes, eBooks are greener. Read on to find out why.

One big variable is whether or not you use an eBook reader. Some companies that offer eBook readers require that you buy the eBooks from them as the file type is proprietary. So if you buy a Kindle, you must buy the associated eBook for the Kindle from Amazon. From a profit perspective this is understandable. However, as a consumer this smells of monopoly to me. It also raises the question of whether the ebook reader’s production and eventual disposal make ebooks a less green option.

The debate about eBooks being a greener choice gets radically simplified if we take eBook readers out of the equation. Let’s do that. because you don’t need one anyway. As a consumer you can choose to purchase a file type that does not require a dedicated eBook device that may be expensive and one day end up in a landfill. For example, at EcoBrain.com the majority of our files are PDFs - you can read them on whatever computer you already have. Removing eBook readers from the equation makes this much easier.

I already own a computer. Don’t you? You probably wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t. So for someone who already owns a computer, the green choice of buying and eBook over a paper book is clear. Don’t get me wrong - I love paper books and enjoy relaxing with a great novel. However, those I get from the library. For the majority of books to own, eBooks are clear winners.

Think about the following facts from Conservatree:

24 trees are required to produce a ton of printing paper for books

12 trees are harvested for a ton of newsprint

up to 35% of books printed for consumers are never read - they are returned to the publisher to be destroyed

A mature tree can produce enough oxygen in a year for 10 people to inhale in a year. Never mind that forests are a place of majesty where precious ecosystems exist. eBooks are created electronically and no trees are cut down to produce them, no ink is used, no fossil fuel to run the printing presses or to deliver them. eBooks don’t need heated or cooled warehouses to store them. eBooks are delivered to you electronically. They are disposed of by using your delete key. They will never take up landfill.

The pollution put out by the pulp and paper industry is another consideration. With the increasing trend towards overseas printing, many books are now printed in Asia, shipped to a local port, trucked to a distribution center and then shipped to a store or to your home if purchased online. Even if the paper for the book was sourced locally, pulp and paper is the third largest industrial polluter to air, water, and land in Canada and the United States, releasing well over 100 million kg (220 million pounds) of toxic pollution each year. While many publishers are making positive strides to produce recycled books, the bottom line is that there is still a huge environmental cost.

Now, to be completely fair, even eBooks used on your existing computer consume some energy. We should assume you run your computer longer in order to read the eBook. I found an excellent analysis of the energy consumed written up by Pablo Päster. It reads:

“My laptop uses about 30 watts (more during start-up). In the time it takes to read a page (8.5 x 11), let's say two minutes, the computer will use 0.001 kWh (kilowatt-hours) of electricity. For a 100-page document this adds up to 0.1 kWh of electricity, costing you less than 2 cents on your electricity bill. The generation of electricity creates about 1,000 pounds of greenhouse gases per MWh (megawatt-hour), or 1 pound per kWh, depending on where your electricity comes from. This means that reading a 100-page document on your laptop causes about one-tenth of a pound of greenhouse gas emissions. Pretty small. But how does that compare to paper?”

He goes on to find that it is much better than paper. For the full details go to: http://www.salon.com/env/ask_pablo/2008/09/08/printers/

And with an eye to the future, isn’t it easier to generate renewable electrical power sources than to try to make the paper industry pollution free? Is the latter even possible?

So save trees, reduce pollution and breathe easier. I don’t see a downside. Do you?

The main obstacle left is to win over consumers. Given the clear green choice perhaps more consumers will give eBooks a try. If each of us choose to purchase 4 or 5 eBooks a year versus paper books, the impact would be huge. Americans alone buy 3 billion books a year. Imagine the trees we could save. Choosing an eBook is another conscious choice we make, much like choosing to use a canvas bag when we shop and say no to petroleum based plastic bags. Together, we can make a world of difference.

For those who haven’t tried an eBook, here are some additional considerations that focus on the eBook experience:

Portability - You can own an entire digital library of books on your laptop or computer. No space is taken up on shelves and you can take them all with you!

Convenience - eBooks download instantly. You can read them anytime, anywhere!

Ease of Use - Click to turn pages, find what you are looking for fast by searching, use the built-in dictionary, bookmark pages, and so on. Super easy to use!

Great prices - Most of our eBooks are about 30% below the MSRP.

Now until November 11, 2008 at EcoBrain.com new customers get a $5 site credit. There are lots of books for under $5, so give EcoBrain and eBooks a try. We also have a freebie (and paper free) available on the home page. So try an eBook for free. See what you think. I bet you’ll find it easier than you thought. Maybe you’ll even choose to buy one over a paper book and help green our world.

By Angela Wieck - angela@EcoBrain.com
Vancouver, BC, Canada

Green Options: Want to Green Your Addiction to Books? Buy Ebooks

As part of Eco-Libris' ongoing content partnership with Green Options Media, we feature a post that was originally published by Jeff McIntire-Strasburg on October 27 on Sustainablog. Today's post talks about one of our favorite topics: ebooks.

OK, I admit it: I'm a book whore (hardly a shocking confession for a former English professor). I'm most vulnerable to impulse buying in a book store. When a publishing PR rep contacts me about a book for review, I jump on it like an addict desperate for that next fix.

But, of course, I also know that book publishing takes a fairly heavy environmental toll: as our friends at EcoLibris have pointed out, "more than 30 million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone." The WorldWatch Institute notes that the average American uses over 300 kilograms (or over 660 pounds) of paper annually. And Erika Engelhaupt, in Environmental Science & Technology, observes:

Reducing paper use does more than save trees. Pulp and paper mills are also a major source of pollution. They release into the air CO2, nitrogen oxides (NOx), sulfur oxides (SOx), carbon monoxide, and particulates, which contribute to global warming, smog, acid rain, and respiratory problems. In addition, bleaching paper with chlorine can produce dioxin, which is known to cause cancer. Paper mills also produce large amounts of solid waste and require a lot of water. The industry is trying to clean up, but anyone who's driven past a paper mill has smelled the challenge.

Yep, that book addiction has quite the footprint. There are numerous approaches to dealing with this impact: "cradle to cradle" book design, Ecolibris-style offsets, used of recycled and non-toxic materials, and, of course, ebooks.