A Happy and Green Passover from Eco-Libris!

Today is the time for the Passover Seder, which is a Jewish ritual held on the first night (and in some places also in the second night) of Passover, which is one of my favorite Jewish holidays.

The Seder is a family gathering, sitting together around the table, reading the Haggadah (he story of the Israelite exodus from Egypt), singing the holiday songs and eating the holiday's traditional food. President Obama will host a Seder at the White House for the fourth time (see photo below from the 2010 Seder at the White House and you can also check the White House Chefs' collection of recipes for Passover) and said he is looking forward to "a good bowl of matzo ball soup".

So how do you green your Seder? Yahoo! The Healthy Voyager had some great tips on BlogHer. Joe Laur had also some good recommendations on Greenopolis, Ann Bell Muzaurieta adds on the Daily Green tips and recipes to keep your Passover healthy and sustainable, and finally the Huddler's Green Home Community brings you on Yahoo! Green 10 good tips on how to have an eco-friendly and organic Seder.

I haven't found yet an Haggadah from recycled paper, but still there are other many steps you can take to make sure you celebrate the Passover in an eco-friendly style.

Enjoy your Seder and Happy Passover from all of us at Eco-Libris!

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Happy Green Passover!

Today is the time for the Passover Seder, which is a Jewish ritual held on the first night (and in some places also in the second night) of Passover, which is one of my favorite Jewish holidays.

The Seder is a family gathering, sitting together around the table, reading the Haggadah (he story of the Israelite exodus from Egypt), singing the holiday songs and eating the holiday's traditional food. Even President Obama will host a seder at the White House (see photo below from the 2010 seder at the White House and you can check here for the 2010 menu).

So how do you green your Seder? Yahoo! The Healthy Voyager has some great tips on BlogHer. Joe Laur had also some good recommendations on Greenopolis, Ann Bell Muzaurieta adds on the Daily Green tips and recipes to keep your Passover healthy and sustainable, and finally the Huddler's Green Home Community brings you on Yahoo! Green 10 good tips on how to have an eco-friendly and organic Seder.

I haven't found yet an Haggadah from recycled paper, but still there are other many steps you can take to make sure you celebrate the Passover in an eco-friendly style.

Enjoy your Seder and Happy Passover from all of us at Eco-Libris!

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

What is the future of bookstores? More customers like President Obama or death by eBook readers?

President Obama stopped by last week at Prairie Lights, an independent bookstore in Iowa City and bought couple of books for his daughters (and Robert Gibbs' son as well). But although the President seemed to enjoy his visit at the bookstore, it looks like the future of bookstores has never looked so bleak.

Not only that bookstores need to compete with online bookstores and deal with the cheap prices retailers like Wal-Mart are offering, now they also have to face what looks like their biggest challenge: the rise of e-books.

"Are eBook Readers the death of bookstores?" asks Tim Martin on News Blaze and adds that "this has been a question more people are starting to ask, especially with the upcoming release of the Apple iPad coming up on April 3, 2010."

And he is not alone. You can find more and more of these questions and debates over the Internet. Many see the iPad, Amazon's Kindle, the Nook and other current and future eBook readers as the most significant threat on bookstores. Others, on the other side, see it as an opportunity and not just a risk. Bill Harley, for example, wrote recently that "independent booksellers should be rooting for electronic media. Their survival may depend on it."

For us this is more than just a theoretical debate on opportunities and risks. We love bookstores, some of our most great partners are bookstores and we see in them an important part of the book industry today and tomorrow. We believe that the way bookstores will be operate in the future can play an important role in the efforts to make the industry more sustainable.

That's why we follow the discussions on the future of bookstores very closely, and we would like to share with you some of the most interesting articles, like the ones mentioned above.

We collect the posts, updates and news we find on a new page on our website entitled "The Future of Bookstores". This webpage will be updated on almost daily basis and we hope you will find it useful! And of course if you see something we missed, please send us an email (info [at] ecolibris [net]) and we'll be happy to add your input.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!