Happy birthday - Eco-Libris is four years old!

On Monday, when the whole US celebrated Independence Day, Eco-Libris had its own birthday celebration - we have just turned 4 years old!

Yes, another year passed and just like the year before, it wasn't an easy one. The economic environment is still very challenging but we still did our best not only to keep our head above the water, but also to grow, meet new goals and move forward in our quest to make reading more sustainable.

And indeed it was a year of progress - we managed to create more partnerships, ran for the second time our green books campaign, enhanced our educational work, continued our involvement at the Book Industry Environmental Council (BIEC), contributed to the discussion on how green e-books are, assisted in the preparation of a shareholder resolution calling Amazon to disclose its environmental impacts, provided analysis of the trends in the book industry from a green point of view and of course planted more trees!

I am proud to report that Eco-Libris balanced out so far 177,759 books, which resulted in 198,063 new trees, of which 39,114 are the result of our operations on the 4th year.

* Photo above is courtesy of our planting partner AIR from the 2009 planting season - AIR volunteer and young helper planting Aliso trees to fertilize family crop, in El Tablon, Guatemala.

We would also like to take this opportunity and thank everyone involved in our efforts - from the dedicated eco-conscious readers that balance out their books with us, through our partners - publishers, authors, bookstores, businesses, organizations and others that take action to support sustainable reading and of course our wonderful planting partners, which are doing such a great job in planting the trees in developing countries.

Here's a reminder of some of things we did last year, month by month:

July 2010
A new collection of poetry and prose of author Janice Winokur is going green with Eco-Libris

Is going green really worthwhile for authors?

August 2010
Natanya by Dror Burstein is the first book in Hebrew to go green with Eco-Libris

A new book of Flux by the Danish Paulo Coelho is going green with Eco-Libris

September 2010
Will the iPad succeed to conquer the campus?

14-year old author Taylor Michie is going green with Eco-Libris

October 2010
Is it greener to borrow ebooks from your local library?

The Last Original Idea is joining the "100 Trees Project" of Infinity Publishing and Eco-Libris

November 2010
200 bloggers are taking part in the Green Books Campaign to support books printed on environmental paper

Can Going Green Help Publishers, or Just Planet Earth?

December 2010
How book companies performed on the Greenpeace Boreal Marketplace Review?

Annual assessments of Eco-Libris' planting partners are available now online

January 2011
How green is your (and my) Kindle?

The future of Independent bookstores (or: 5 comments on 'Small Bookstores Struggle for Niche in Shifting Times')

February 2011
Dr. Anne Hallum, founder and director of our planting partner AIR was named one of CNN’s 2011 Heroes!

Brighter Books is collaborating with Eco-Libris to plant a tree for every printed copy of their books!

March 2011
Launching our Earth Day campaign, 41 Reasons to Plant a Tree for Your Book

The Scandinavian publisher Whyte Tracks is partnering with Eco-Libris

April 2011
Global Sky's tree planting initiative celebrates the planting of more than 2,000 trees!

SHI & Eco-Libris: Launching Culantro Rojo Organics

May 2011
Raven Wings and 13 More Twisted Tales by Frank Poe Jr. has joined the "100 Trees Project"

5 ways to green your ebook reading

June 2011
Why Amazon rejected a shareholder decision to disclose how it deals with climate change?

10 best green ebooks for Father's Day!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for every book you read!

Happy birthday to Kate Winslet, Grant Hill and all the others who celebrate their birthday today!

What's the connection between musician Bob Geldof, actress Kate Winslet, artist Maya Lin and basketball player Grant Hill?

They were all born on October 5! If you're also celebrating your birthday today - happy birthday to you too!

We love birthdays and therefore we're happy to remind you of the option to celebrate a birthday of friends, family members, colleagues and anyone you care about with Eco-Libris!

Eco-Libris is offering you now to plant trees to balance out the books of your loved ones who celebrate their birthday. Not only that new trees will be planted to balance out their books, but they will also receive our stickers with a beautiful birthday card made of recycled paper. And we also try to keep it affordable - the added charge for the birthday card is only $1.5.

All you need to do is to choose how many of the birthday person's books you want to balance out on our special birthday gift page (http://www.ecolibris.net/birthday.asp), change the shipping address on the payment page to the address of the gift receiver and we will take care of the rest!

This is also a great green add-on if you're buying a book as a gift for the birthday person, especially if you're buying her or him a green book.

The birthday cards we send are made by Doodle Greetings (see picture above of one of their cards). Not only these cards come with a beautiful design, but they are also eco-friendly - printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper and are made chlorine-free and acid free. Sounds like a good fit with Eco-Libris stickers!

And of course, if it's your birthday and you want to give yourself a green gift - get yourself a nice green book and plant a tree for it with us!

Happy Birthday!
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

Happy birthday - Eco-Libris is three years old!

Last weekend when the United States celebrated Independence Day, Eco-Libris had its own birthday celebration - we have just turned three years old!

Yes, another year passed and just like the year before, it wasn't an easy one. Like many others we had to cope with a challenging economic environment and that wasn't easy :) Still, we did our best not only to keep our head above the water, but also to grow and move forward in our quest to make reading more sustainable.

And indeed it was a year of progress - we managed to create more partnerships, launch a unique campaign promoting books that are printed in an eco-friendly manner, enhance our educational work, join the Book Industry Environmental Council, contribute to the discussion on how green e-books and e-readers are, provide further analysis of the green trends in the book industry, visit one of our planting partners and of course plant more trees!

I am proud to report that Eco-Libris balanced out so far 145,347 books, which resulted in 158,949 new trees, of which 47,559 are the result of our operations on the third year.

Here are our tree planting figures over our three of operations:

2007/8	65,865
2008/9	45,525
2009/10	47,559
Total:	158,949

*Photo above is courtesy of our planting partner AIR from the 2009 planting season - AIR volunteer and young helper planting Aliso trees to fertilize family crop, in El Tablon, Guatemala.

We would also like to take this opportunity and thank everyone involved in our efforts - from the dedicated eco-conscious readers that balance out their books with us, through our partners - publishers, authors, bookstores, businesses, organizations and others that take action to support sustainable reading and of course our wonderful planting partners, which are doing such a great job in planting the trees in developing countries.

Here's a reminder of some of things we did on this year, month by month:

July 2009
Our planting partner SHI is getting mentioned on Oprah Magazine

The state of green printing: An interview with Livio Ciciotti of Monroe Litho

August 2009
A new children's book, "A Lion's Mane" is going green with Eco-Libris

Global Sky, a leading Philippines-based call center is partnering with Eco-Libris

September 2009
Analysis of a new report that finds Kindle to be greener than physical books

Write Bloody Publishing is partnering with Eco-Libris, starting with a poems collection by Taylor Mali

October 2009
Pick-a-WooWoo Publishers, an Australian publisher, is going green with Eco-Libris

Kabbalah Publishing, publisher of "The Power to Change Everything" by Yehuda Berg is collaborating with Eco-Libris

November 2009
Our Green Books Campaign is taking place with over 100 bloggers who take a stand to support books printed in an eco-friendly manner by publishing reviews of more than 100 such books

A new book from Flux, "Turning to One Another", is going green with Eco-Libris

December 2009
We publish the annual assessments of our planting partners

Everything you always wanted to know about forestry carbon credits - A special interview with Paulo Lopes of Carbon Clear

January 2010
Presenting a new series: How green is the iPad?

GreetQ is celebrating 650 new trees that are being planted with Eco-Libris following their operations in 2009

February 2010
Eco-Libris starts a new campaign rewarding green readers with green gifts

Karen Finneyrock's new collection of poetry is going green with Eco-Libris

March 2010
Plant a Book: ELI, a leader in educational publishing, is partnering with Eco-Libris in a new program aiming to plant tens of thousands of trees

A new memoir, Coming Clean by Sarah Dean, is going green with Eco-Libris

April 2010
The reissued novel The Birth Machine by Elizabeth Baines is going green with Eco-Libris

Launching new pages on the future of publishing and the future of bookstores

May 2010
Moon Willow Press plant trees with Eco-Libris for their first e-Book: The Little Big Town

Speaking with green marketing experts in an attempt to to find out if book publishers can build an effective green brand

June 2010
Infinity partners with Eco-Libris to launch the first green program for self-publishing authors

How green is my iPad? Analyzing the iPad's environmental report (4-part series)

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading

Happy birthday to Aaspirations Publishing!

Congrats to our partner Aaspirations Publishing that is celebrating its fourth anniversary today!

Aaspirations Publishing is a green publisher of Toronto, Canada that is collaborating with Eco-Libris to plant a treefor every children’s’ picture book they print. We planted so far thousands of trees for great books such as "The Micro Meanies" by Lynda Anderson and "Where the Buttercups Grow" by Shelley Meyer.

Aaspirations Publishing is celebrating its 4th anniversary with the success of the Canadian Bestseller, The Last Six Minutes by Sandra Martins -Toner and a line up of great books by their talented authors and illustrators; as well as a possible movie in the offing.

Coming soon, their mag-a-log for kids, called My Book and much more great stuff as they team up to bring the pleasure of reading books and more, to customers around the world.

So happy birthday Aaspirations Publishing! We wish them many more years of great success, with many more interesting new books and of course many more trees to be planted on their behalf.


Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green books!

It's August 26 - Happy Birthday!

What's the connection between John Wilkes Booth (an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln), guitarist Jimmy Olander, actor Macaulay Culkin and myself?

We were all born on August 26 and celebrating today (except Booth of course) our birthday! If you're also celebrating your birthday today - happy birthday to you too!

We love birthdays (especially ours..) and therefore we would like to remind you of the opportunity to celebrate a birthday of friends, family members, colleagues and anyone you care about with Eco-Libris!

Eco-Libris is offering you now to plant trees to balance out the books of your loved ones who celebrate their birthday. Not only that new trees will be planted to balance out their books, but they will also receive our stickers with a beautiful birthday card made of recycled paper. And we also try to keep it affordable - the added charge for the birthday card is only $1.5.

All you need to do is to choose how many of the birthday person's books you want to balance out on our special birthday gift page (http://www.ecolibris.net/birthday.asp), change the shipping address on the payment page to the address of the gift receiver and we will take care of the rest!

This is also a great green add-on if you're buying a book as a gift for the birthday person, especially if you're buying her or him a green book.

The birthday cards we send are made by Doodle Greetings (see picture above of one of their cards). Not only these cards come with a beautiful design, but they are also eco-friendly - printed on 100% post-consumer recycled paper and are made chlorine-free and acid free. Sounds like a good fit with Eco-Libris stickers!

And of course, if it's your birthday and you want to give yourself a green gift - get yourself a nice green book and plant a tree for it with us!

I'm going to eat some cake. Happy Birthday everyone!

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Happy Birthday - Eco-Libris is two years old!

Last weekend when the United States celebrated Independence Day, Eco-Libris had its own birthday celebration - we have just turned two years old!

Yes, another year passed and let me tell you - it wasn't an easy one. Like many others we had to cope with difficult economy and work hard to keep our heads above the water. At the same time, we try to look at these difficulties as an opportunity to improve, innovate, develop new programs and explore more ways to pursue our mission more effectively.

Still it was a year of progress - we managed to create more partnerships, enhance our educational work, tighten our relationships with our planting partners, contribute to the discussion about green issues in the book industry and of course plant more trees!

I am proud to report that Eco-Libris balanced out so far 98,066 books, which resulted in 111,390 new trees, of which 45,525 are the result of our operations on the second year.


















Here's a reminder of some of things we did on this year, month by month:

July 2008
The UConn co-op joins Eco-Libris bookstores program

Madeline Kaplan, author of "Planet Earth Gets Well" is collaborating with Eco-Libris

Subscription option is becoming available on Eco-Libris website

August 2008
BlogHer's first book "Sleep is for the Weak" is going green with Eco-Libris

Tania Hershman, author of "The White Road and Other Stories" is collaborating with Eco-Libris

New collaboration with Bookworm Baskets, which sells book-themed gift baskets

September 2008
GreetQ, an online greeting card retailer, is collaborating with Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris is contributing to a demonstration of a green campus residence hall

A collaboration with Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing in an educational contest for kids

October 2008
New partnership with the Norwegian publisher Flux starts with a book on Arne Næss

Eco-Libris is collaborating with Dutch author Annet Struik

"The Legend of Ninja Cowboy Bear" is going green with Eco-Libris

November 2008
A new collaboration with Aaspirations Publishing, a proud green publisher

We have a monthly newsletter with special offers to our subscribers

Eco-Libris is collaborating with BookSwim in an holiday campaign

December 2008
We publish the annual assessments of our planting partners

An interview on Treehugger.com

Publishing the Green Collar Holiday Gift Guide for Book Lovers

January 2009
Collaboration with eBook publisher, Wyrdwood Publications, starts with "The Mouse in the Viking's Beard"

Publishing an interview with Greg Barber, an eco-friendly printer

Celebrating a new year with a new series - My green resolution for 2009

February 2009
Eco-Libris is available now at Hooray for Books! in Old Alexandria, Virginia

Celebrating another successful planting season of our planting partner RIPPLE Africa with photos from Malawi

We report on our blog on a green publisher that bits the recession - Chelsea Green Publishing

March 2009
The publisher and the author of "Sammy and Sue Go Green Too!" is collaborating with Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris on the cover of Awareness Magazine

New collaboration with the authors of "Green Beginnings"

April 2009
Raincoast Books and Eco-Libris are collaborating in a green campaign "Buy a book, Plant a tree"

Eco-Libris is taking part in a green reading event of the Chicago Bulls in a local school

A green campaign on Facebook

May 2009
A joint campaign with Barefoot Books in celebration of their new book 'Earth Tales'

Partnering with Pilcrow Lit Fest in Chicago

Participating in BookExpo America

June 2009
In collaboration with Greg Barber, we start a new series on our blog of weekly green printing tips

New collaboration with Kathleen Wilson, the author of the new book 'Rumer & Qix: The Race to Terra Incognita'

Bambeco, an online retailer of eco-friendly and stylish products for the home, is collaborating now with Eco-Libris

And what's next? we already work on new programs that we believe will assist us in achieving our goals - greening up the book industry and making reading more sustainable.We'll have more details soon so stay tuned!

We would also like to take this opportunity and thank everyone involved in our efforts - from the dedicated eco-conscious readers that balance out their books with us, through our business partners that take action to support the environment all the way to our wonderful planting partners that are doing such a great job in planting the trees in developing countries.

Thank you all!

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

*photo is courtesy of RIPPLE Africa from the 2008/9 planting season - Makuzi Afforestation club

Happy Birthday: Eco-Libris is one year old!

I hope you all enjoyed a joyful 4th of July. We also had our own birthday celebration this week. Yes, Eco-Libris just turned one year old!

Wow. I can't believe a year passed since it all started..This was a very exciting year for all of us at Eco-Libris. We started one year ago with the vision of making reading more sustainable. We came with a lot of enthusiasm and big love for books and the environment. We wanted to establish a green company that will become an agent of change in the book industry.

One year later I am proud to report that we have balanced out so far 50,005 books, which results in 65,865 new trees that are being planted with our planting partners in developing countries!

And what a busy year it was! Here's a reminder of some of main things that we had on the first year:

• We worked with publishers such as Kedzie Press and BookHouse that wanted to green up titles they published by planting trees for each and every printed copy of them. We also established other collaborations with publishers like Process and Barefoot Books.
  


• We initiated our bookstores program that gives book buyers the opportunity to plant a tree for the book they just bought at the bookstore at the counter. We have now 22 bookstores in the program from the U.S., Canada and Ireland, including Strand Book Store (NY), Hue-Man Bookstore (NY), San Francisco State University (CA) and Black Bear Books (NC).
  
  
• We worked with many eco-conscious readers from all over the world that balanced out through our website the books they read or buy by planting trees.
  


• We collaborated with many authors that wanted to plant trees for their books and used our "One tree planted for this book” stickers (printed on recycled paper) when selling books directly from their website , or on book signing or launch events.
  


• We had a joint campaign with Raincoast Books, the Canadian publisher and distributor.
  


• We started a partership with Chegg, the textbook rental service that plant a tree for every textbook students rent with this great service.
  


• We initiated a collaboration with BookMooch, the online book swapping community, and did with them a great promotion of green books on Earth Day.
  


• We became a member of the Sustainable Business Network (SBN) of Greater Philadelphia.
  


• We worked hard to increase the awareness in the need of change in the book industry, through this blog, by offering resources on our website, interviews in the media, starting communication with local organizations of publishers and bookstores, joint work with literature events, participation in green fairs, and establishing connections with libraries, green organizations and companies and anyone who wanted to learn more why and how reading should be made more sustainable.
  


• And of course, we started this blog, that in time became an important source of news and views in the field of green reading. We prepared special green book guides, reviewed many green-themed books, covered many relevant issues, had special coverage on a report on he industry's footprint, started 'my green bookshelf' series and mainly had a lot of fun!

And what's next? we have a lot of of work in front of us! We are going to work harder on the second year to balance out more and more books, expand globally and bring the change we're looking for - make books greener and move towards sustainable reading!

I would like to take this opportunity and thank everyone involved in our efforts - from the dedicated eco-conscious readers that balance out their books with us, through our business partners that take action to support the environment all the way to our wonderful planting partners that are doing such a great job in planting the trees in developing countries.

And I'm happy to add a photo that is fresh from the oven. It just arrived from our planting partner AIR that worked last month on planting trees in Guatemala, some of them with the support of Eco-Libris, as you can see from the photo below that were provided to by AIR.

AIR volunteers plant trees that were purchased with the support of Eco-Libris in Itzapa, Guatemalla. The species planted are Pino Triste (Pseudotrobus); Fresno (Fraxinus Undei); Ilamo, aka Aliso (Alnus jourulensis); and Gravilea (Gravilea Robusta).

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: plant a tree for every book you read!