The sun shines on Powell's Books

Solar Daily reported last week (thanks to Grist for the info) that Powell's Books, one of the U.S. largest booksellers, will begin using solar power at their Portland-based warehouse next month.

According to the report, the 100-kilowatt photovoltaic system (including 540 solar panels) positioned on the roof of Powell's 60,000 square foot warehouse in NW Portland, is one of the largest solar electric installations in the State of Oregon.

This is a great way of course not only to support the environment but also to save eventually money by reducing energy costs (payback on the investment is expected within five years). Michael Powell explains on the article that "it made perfect sense for our business financially, and it supports our values as a company. We are continually looking for ways for our business to lessen its impact on the environment."

Kudos to Powell's Books efforts! We definitely hope to see more solar panels on many booksellers' roofs. Solar systems offer a win-win deal that both helps the environment and saves money, and you can even find today ways to bypass the burden of the relatively high initial investment that is required to start using the sun to light your bookstore.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

Obama's book club?

Today when you have time to rest and digest the Thanksgiving dinner, we've got a recommendation about an interesting article from the NYT about the person who might replace Oprah Winfrey when it comes to recommending on books and influencing the book market - President-elect Barack Obama.

The article ("For Books, Is Obama New Oprah?"), written by Motoko Rich about two weeks ago is discussing the effect of a mention Mr. Obama made on CBS in his first interview since winning the election, about having read “a new book out about F .D. R.’s first 100 days” without specifically naming a title or author.

Besides the riddle about the specific book he reffered to, there were other consquences: "Hill & Wang, an imprint of Farrar, Straus & Giroux, which originally printed fewer than 5,000 copies of “F D R: The First Hundred Days” in June and received scant review coverage in the United States, decided to reprint 5,000 copies on Monday morning, partly in response to orders from booksellers. In an e-mail message, Bob Wietrak, a vice president of merchandising for Barnes & Noble Booksellers, said the company had noticed an uptick in orders on BN.com following the interview and was trying to get more copies in stock."

Will we see more recommendations on books from President Obama? I'm quite sure we will (how about Obama's book club? that can be a change in the White House). And wouldn't it be great if one of them would be a green-themed book? Let's wait and see..

More posts on Oprah Winfrey's book club:

A special green offer for readers of Oprah's Book Club new selection

Happy Holidays,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

How about an affordable and unique green birthday

What's the connection between Tina Terner, the rapper Lil Fizz, actor Scot Jacoby and playwright Eugene Ionesco?

They were all born on November 26! 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!

Happy Thanksgiving!
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

Reminder: your young kids can win great prizes in a special contest of Simon & Schuster and Eco-Libris

Last September we updated you about our new collaboration with Simon and Schuster Children's Publishing: in a celebration of their new line of eco-friendly children’s books, Little Green Books, Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing has partnered with Eco-Libris in an educational contest - I CAN SAVE THE EARTH!.

Children between the ages of 5-10 are invited to write about their own experiences and ideas in helping to save planet Earth. Stories can be submitted via a downloadable entry form HERE. Any story goes and the greener the better! The winning stories will be posted on the Little Green Books’ websites so kids can gain green ideas from their peers.

Children can submit their stories until December 1, 2008 (the contest wasn't extended eventually as we reported in the first place. sorry!)

Prizes include free copies of the new Little Green Books, such as I can Save the Earth!: One Little Monster Learns to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle; Little Monkey; Little Panda; and The Polar Bears’ Home: A Story About Global Warming; among others. Trees will be planted in developing countries by Eco-Libris on the winning children’s behalf.

The contest celebrates the Fall 2008 launch of Little Green Books, published by Little Simon, an imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing. It is the first eco-friendly line of children’s novelty and storybooks, aimed at parents and children looking to learn more about the environment. All the Little Green Books are made out of recycled materials.

Eco-Libris will be planting with its planting partners 100 new trees in developing countries on behalf of the winning children. The winners will also receive Eco-Libris stickers (made of recycled paper) saying “One tree planted for this book”, which they can proudly display on their books at home, and show to all their friends.

We are very excited about partnering with Simon & Schuster in this contest. Little Green Books are an effective way to help plant the seeds of earth-friendly living at an early age, and we thought that this contest can add a great educational value to the books. We believe that it’s important that the voice of children will be heard and that other kids can benefit a great deal from these personal stories.

Here's more information about the first four books on the series that were launched earlier this month (from the Little Green Books' website):

Little Monkey

Author: Kimberly Ainsworth

Illustrated by: Michelle Berg

Ages: 3 and under

Description: Meet Little Monkey and his friend Little Panda as they spend their day eating their favorite foods and playing together! Little ones will love to cuddle with this supersoft fleece cloth book that's made out of cotton and recycled Polartec® fleece.

This book is machine-washable and comes packaged in a chipboard box that's made from 100% recycled material.

The Polar Bears' Home: A Story About Global Warming

Author: Lara Bergen

Illustrated by: Vincent Nguyen

Ages: 4 - 6

Description: Come along on an Arctic adventure with a little girl and her father and learn all about polar bears! This 8 x 8 storybook shows how global warming affects two baby polar bear cubs and their family. Includes tips for kids on what they can do to help slow down global warming. This 8 x 8 paperback book is perfect-bound and will be printed on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper with soy-ink. The paper is FSC certified.

Little Panda

Author: Kimberly Ainsworth

Illustrated by: Michelle Berg

Ages: 3 and under

Description: Meet Little Panda and his friend Little Monkey as they spend their day eating their favorite foods and playing together. Little ones will love to cuddle with this supersoft fleece cloth book that's made out of cotton and recycled Polartec® fleece. This book is machine-washable and comes packaged in a chipboard box that's made from 100% recycled material. It's the perfect gift for a baby!

I Can Save the Earth!: One Little Monster Learns to Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle

Author: Alison Inches

Illustrated by: Viviana Garofoli

Ages: 4 - 6

Description: Meet Max the Little Monster. He is a cute, furry green monster who is an environmental nightmare. Among other things, he leaves on all the lights, keeps his computer plugged in, blasts the TV, hoards his old toys and uses so much toilet paper it clogs the toilet until finally, his excessive ways cause a power outage. With no TV to watch, computer to play on, video games to play with, Max finds there is a whole big world outside that he can make a difference in the environment. A kid-friendly glossary of terms is included in the back of the book.This 8x8 paperback is perfect bound and will be printed on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper with soy-ink. The paper is FSC certified.

So if you have any kids between the ages of 5-10, and they already work hard to help Planet Earth, let them know about the contest. We will be happy to see as many children as possible sharing with each other their little green stories!

The contest web page:
http://www.simonsays.com/content/index.cfm?tab=1&pid=647684

Happy Thanksgiving,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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

Random House is offering 7,000 more titles in digital format

More and more books are available as e-books and that's not really big news anymore. But big publishers that significantly increase the availability of their books in digital form, or like Treehugger call them "hot for e-books", still is. Especially when it's the biggest one - Random House.

Yes, PhysOrg is reporting today that Random House, the world's largest English-language general trade book publisher, announced that it was making thousands of additional books available in digital form, including novels by John Updike and Harlan Coben, as well as several volumes of the "Magic Treehouse" children's series.

The publisher is almost doubling the books they have in electronic format - from more than 8,000 to nearly 15,000. I believe that this move is in accordance with Random House's increased e-books sales (according to their vice president for digital operations, Matt Shatz, sales have increased by triple digit percentages in 2008), as well as with their willingness to diversify their platform and provide more options to readers.

As their VP for digital operations reported much of the significant increase in e-book sales are thanks to Amazon.com’s Kindle reader. I wonder how the current economic will influence the sales of e-books in the next couple of month. My guesstimation is that we'll see very little growth with e-books sales because of the Kindle's relatively high price. Still, it's cheaper to buy an e-book than a book and therefore I think we'll still see sales growing and not decreasing.

All in all we shouldn't forget that we're still talking about a niche with market share of about 1% of the whole book sales market.

And what about the green aspect of this move? will thousands of additional books available in digital form be better the environment or not? well, e-books don’t need paper and therefore no trees are cut down which is a good thing. They don’t need transportation or physical storage and therefore no extra costs and extra footprint are required to bring the book from the publisher to the reader. Yet, other factors to be considered, especially with regards to e-book readers such as their production, materials used, energy required for the reader’s use, and how recyclable they are.

So what’s the verdict? We still don’t know as we’re lacking a full life-cycle assessment of reading e-books using kindle or other similar electronic book readers. Until we have that, we can’t really tell for sure if and to what extent e-books, including the new 7,000 Random House titles, are more environmentally-friendly in comparison to paper made books.

More links on e-books:

E-books vs. paper books - resources page on Eco-Libris website

eBooks - A Greener Choice or Not?

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!

Who needs paper phone books anymore?

I read Ideal Bite's tips for many years and I always find there interesting green information, ideas and recommendations. Yesterday's tip was about an issue that relates almost to anyone - phone books.

Is there really a need for a paper phonebook on the digital age when we get so much info in one click? personally I think we don't need paper phone books anymore. Certainly we don't need to receive a new one every year. Do you know anyone who still use phone books?

The benefits of phone books are marginal if any. If you're looking for a phone number, you can find it very easily on websites such as AnyWho, PhoneNumber.com and White Pages, or even the Google SMS service from your mobile phone.

And what about the costs?

Publish Post

Well, the costs are significant. According to Ideal Bite about 540 million unsolicited phone books arrive at American doors annually. What does it mean in terms of trees? according to Ted.me the average weight of the a phone directory is 3.62 pounds, so if we use the equation of 1 metric ton of paper = 20 trees (which we use here for the book industry), we get this number: 17,740,000 trees. Yes, almost 18 million trees are cut down every year to produce these chubby unnecessary phone books.

Even more frustrating is the fact that so many of them end in landfills instead of the recycling bins. According to Ideal Bite, phone books make for about 660,000 tons of trash every year!

So what can you about it? how can we stop receiving phone books we don't need and don't use? Ideal Bite's tip is to use YellowPagesGoesGreen.org - it's a movement against unsolicited phone book delivery (both Yellow and White Pages books), where you can sign up to remove your home or office from receiving the telephone directories.

You're also welcome to visit YellowPagesGoesGreen.org to get more information about this phenomenon and find out why you keep getting these books every year (hint: someone is making money out of it..) and how many of them are recycled (less than 10%!). So check it out and spread the word about this option to stop receiving phone books year after year.

The bottom line is that it's all about the money - Ted.me reports that the directory industry worth to the telephone companies in the United States $13.58 billion! The power of the industry and the money it makes is based mainly on its wide circulation - if many people will ask not to receive these phone books anymore, phonebooks won't be that attractive and eventually advertisers will look for other routes to put their money into (maybe the websites that provide the same service without cutting any trees..).

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

Special offer on Aaspirations Publishing's website

Earlier this month we announced on our collaboration with Aaspriations Publishing of Toronto, Canada, where a tree is planted with Eco-Libris for every copy of their new titles. Now they also have a special holidays offer for our stickers on their website.

You can order our stickers from Aaspirations Publications' website, or simply add it on to your order of books. For every sticker bought, one tree will be planted with our planting partners. And that's not all! You will receive a $2 cash coupon on every purchase of more than 2 stickers.

Offer ends November 30th, so you've got 9 more days to check it out.

Happy green holidays!
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Plant a tree for every book you read!