The Secret Life of Paper

How is paper production related to forest destruction and global warming? Why is recycling and buying recycled paper important? Some of the replies to these questions can be found below in a video called "The Secret Life of Paper".

Thanks to the Green Initiative Press' last newsletter I learned about this interesting video of INFORM. It is part of INFORM’s Secret Life Series, which is a collection of videos that highlight the environmental impacts of everyday products we all use.

INFORM is an organization that is "dedicated to educating the public about the effects of human activity on the environment and public health. Our goal is to empower citizens, businesses and government to adopt practices and policies that will sustain our planet for future generations."



You can find more important information on the environmental impacts of paper production, paper recycling, alternative fibers, and policy at the Secret Life Series website.

Enjoy the video,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

The Bible has never looked so green

I'm not a religous person, but I always believed that religion and environment goes hand in hand, especially when what religious people see as god's creation is in danger. That's why I was happy to hear about The Green Bible.

The Green Bible, which was published this week by HarperOne (a HarperCollins imprint), includes besides the bible itself many special features tracing environmental themes woven through Scripture. The unique green features include:

- Green-Letter Edition: Verses and passages that speak to God's care for creation highlighted in green
- Foreword by Archbishop Desmond Tutu
- Essays of author Brian McLaren on the theological shift toward creation care; preacher Barbara Brown Taylor on our responsibility to care for what God loves; the late pope John Paul II on the ecological crisis as a moral problem; Jewish environmentalist Ellen Bernstein on ten principles of creation theology; and Anglican Bishop of Durham, England N.T. Wright on how we must be God’s agents in bringing forth environmental renewal today. - Inspirational quotes from Christian teachings throughout the ages
- A green Bible topical index
- A personal green Bible trail study guide
- An appendix with information on further reading, how to get involved, and practical steps to take

The Green Bible strives to equip and encourage people to see God's vision for creation and help them engage in the work of healing and sustaining it. With over 1,000 references to the earth in the Bible, compared to 490 references to heaven and 530 references to love, the Bible carries a powerful message for the earth.

The Good Book is produced with soy-based inks, 10% recycled paper, and a 100% cotton/linen cover. It is targeted to people who share both green and religious beliefs - Mark Tauber, senior vice-president for HarperOne, told BusinessWeek that they hope to sell 25,000 to 30,000 copies a year and that he wants to market The Green Bible to eco-aware churches and influential thinkers.

The Bible “is an ecological handbook on how to live rightly on earth,” says conservationist Cal DeWitt, one of the contributors. Well, I guess that even atheists can be interested with this green interpretation of the bible.

For more information visit http://www.greenletterbible.com/. You're also welcome to watch this video from the website:



Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

Launch party of 'The White Road' this Saturday in Jerusalem

Last month we updated you on the launch of Tania Hershman's first book, The White Road and other Stories, which is published by UK's renowned Salt Publishing. This great collection of short stories is going green with us and we're planting a tree for every copy printed.

And no book launch is completed without a launch party, so we're happy to update you that Tania is having a launch party this Saturday in Jerusalem!

Here are the details of the party:

Date: Saturday, October 11, 2008
Time: 7:30pm - 10:30pm
Location: Jerusalem, Israel. For the address details please write Tania at tania@thewhiteroadandotherstories.com

Tania will be doing short readings from the book at around 8.pm and at 9pm, and copies of the book will be available to buy.

Here are some more details about the book:

What links a café in Antarctica, a factory for producing electronic tracking tags and a casino where gamblers can wager their shoes? They're among the multiple venues where Tania Hershman sets her unique tales in this spellbinding debut collection.

Fleeing from tragedy, a bereaved mother opens a cafe on the road to the South Pole. A town which has always suffered extreme cold enjoys sudden warmth. A stranger starts plaiting a young woman's hair. A rabbi comes face to face with an angel in a car park. An elderly woman explains to her young carer what pregnancy used to mean before science took over. A middle-aged housewife overcomes a fear of technology to save her best friend. A desperate childless woman resorts to extreme measures to adopt. A young man's potential is instantly snuffed out by Nature's whims. A lonely widow bakes cakes in the shape of test tubes and DNA.

A number of these stories are inspired by articles from science magazines, taking fact as their starting points and wondering what might happen if . . .? In these surreal, lyrical stories, many of which are only a few pages long, Tania Hershman allows her imagination free rein, as her characters navigate through love, death, friendship, spirituality, mental illness and the havoc wreaked by the weather.

More on 'The White Road and Other Stories':

The book's website

The White Road and Other Stories - A Short Stories Collection is Going Green

Tania Hershman's website

Enjoy the party!
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

Eco-Libris blog is on the list of the top 100 environmentalist blogs

We just got an update that Eco-Libris blog that was included in "The Top 100 Environmentalist Blogs" list of the blog X-Ray Vision-aries Blog.

This is very exciting news and we thank X-Ray Vision-aries Blog for having us on this list, together with so many blogs that we admire and follow.

You can find the list on this link: http://www.x-raytechnicianschools.org/ekg-technician/the-top-100-environmentalist-blogs/.

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

Monday's green books series: 'Bottlemania' by Elizabeth Royte

Think about water for a second. You probably drank some already today. Was it from the tap or from a bottled water? does it matter? it certainly is as we can learn from our book today on our blog's green books series, and not just from a financial point of view, but also from environmental and social perspectives.

Our book for today is:

Bottlemania: How Water Went on Sale and Why We Bought It

Author: Elizabeth Royte

Elizabeth Royte is the author of Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash and The Tapir's Morning Bath: Solving the Mysteries of the Tropical Rain Forest - both New York Times Notable Books. Her writing on science and the environment has appeared in Harper's, National Geographic, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, and other national publications.

Royte is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review, a contributing editor for OnEarth, and a correspondent for Outside magazine. A former Alicia Patterson Foundation fellow and recipient of Bard College's John Dewey Award for Distinguished Public Service, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their daughter.

Publisher: Bloomsbury USA (1st U.S. Ed edition)

Published on: May 13, 2008

What it is about (from Bottlemania's website):

In the follow-up to Garbage Land, her influential investigation into our modern trash crisis, Elizabeth Royte ventures to Fryeburg, Maine, to look deep into the source—of Poland Spring water. In this tiny town, and in others like it across the country, she finds the people, machines, economies, and cultural trends that have made bottled water a $60-billion-a-year phenomenon even as it threatens local control of a natural resource and litters the landscape with plastic waste.

Moving beyond the environmental consequences of making, filling, transporting and landfilling those billions of bottles, Royte examines the state of tap water today (you may be surprised), and the social impact of water-hungry multinationals sinking ever more pumps into tiny rural towns. Ultimately, Bottlemania makes a case for protecting public water supplies, for improving our water infrastructure and—in a world of increasing drought and pollution—better allocating the precious drinkable water that remains.

Why you should get it:

I read some time ago that bottled water will become the cigarettes of the 21st century. Well, it ain't happening yet and you don't see bottled water drinkers get pressured by regulation and society as smokers are. You also don't see companies like Nestle (owner of Poland Spring) treated the same way Phillip Morris is treated for example. But if there's any chance you will see eventually people drinking from bottled water at the corner of the streets and outside of bars, feeling a bit uncomfortable to do what they do it's because of books like Bottlemania.

There are so many environmental and social issues associated with the use of bottled water that you can't really know where to begin. What I do know is that a) water is a scarce resource b) there's hardly ever a real discussion about the real need in bottled water and on their footprint and c) there's a lot of money involved here (it's a $10 billion industry) so it's very hard to reveal the truth. Because of all of these three factors I'm very happy that we have a book like Bottlemania, which provides us with a serious discussion on an issue. We definitely need it for the sake of our future.

What others say about the book:

“An easy-to-swallow survey…. after you read it you will sip warily from your water bottle (whether purchased or tap, plastic or not), as freaked out by your own role in today’s insidious water wars as by Royte’s recommended ecologically responsible drink: “Toilet to tap.”” —Lisa Margonelli, New York Times Book Review

"Bottlemania makes the case that it's not in our interests to let private multinational corporations float their boats on our nation's water. That's not democracy, it's dam-ocracy, and it could damn us all if we let their unquenchable thirst for profit take precedence over our right to clean, safe, free drinking water." —Kerry Trueman, Huffingtonpost.com

“Bottlemania is eye-opening and informative; you will never look at water – either "designer" or tap – in quite the same way. Royte demonstrates how everything is, in the end, truly connected.” —Elizabeth Kolbert

More resources:

Bottlemania's website

First chapter of Bottlemania (from the New York Times)

An interview with Elizabeth Royte on Grist

Elizabeth Royte on NPR's Marketplace (audio)

The author's water links

If you're looking for other interesting green-themed books, you are invited to check out our green books page on our website's green resources section.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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

Sign up to Eco-Libris newsletter and you can win a copy of the new book 'Of Parrots and People'

Last month we initiated our newsletter and we invite you to sign up for it. We also have a special offer: sign up this month to our newsletter and you can win a copy of Mira Tweti's new book 'Of Parrots and People'.

Eco-Libris newsletter is planned right now to be a monthly newsletter, so you can expect to hear from us only once a month. On the newsletter we will offer you updates about our work and our latest collaborations in the book industry. We will also include articles on the book and paper industry from our unique green perspective, as well as special offers and discounts!

And as mentioned above, if you sign up until October 31, you will have the chance of winning a copy of "Of Parrots and People: The Sometimes Funny, Always Fascinating, and Often Catastrophic Collision of Two Intelligent Species" by Mira Tweti.

All you have to do is just to sign up, using the box on the right side of the page saying 'Join Our Email List' and that's it. We will have a raffle between the new subscribers on November 1st and will post here the name of the winner. And of course, a tree will be planted for this copy as well!

Thank you to the author Mira Tweti for the copy. Our collaboration with her started in her last book "Here, There and Everywhere", and continues in this book as well. The book endorses Eco-Libris - there is an entire page (page 304) devoted to Eco-Libris and how readers can balance out their copy of the book on Eco-Libris website.

You can find more about the book on this link: http://ecolibris.blogspot.com/2008/08/of-parrots-and-people-new-book-of.html

So what are you waiting for? the next newsletter will be sent in about one week, so don't miss it!

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

How about a unique and affordable green birthday gift?

What's the connection between the actrees Susan Srandon, author Anne Rice, actor Buster Keaton and Singer and songwriter Jon Secada?

They were all born on October 4! 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, 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 present - get yourself a nice green book and plant a tree for it with us!

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!