Green printing tip no. 18: What is rock paper, and why is it considered a Green paper?

We have another tip for you on our weekly series of green printing tips, where we bring you information on green printing in collaboration with Greg Barber, an experienced eco-friendly printer.

Today Greg is introducing a type of a paper that is one of the rising stars in the world of green printing:

What is rock paper, and why is it considered a Green paper?

Tip #18

Rock paper? Yes! I'm not sure how many have heard of this paper but rock paper is made from approximately 85% Limestone and Calcium Carbonate. I call it recycled rock paper, since it is made from torn down buildings.

Here are some of the things you should know and take into consideration about rock paper:

The environmental aspects

1. There is no water used in making this line of paper. With a world wide water shortage, this is becoming as big an environmental plus, as landfill waste.

2. There is a huge savings in energy to make rock paper.

What are the most common uses of rock paper?

Rock paper is available in 4PT and 5 PT for labels, soap wraps, and brochures, and heavier weights, like 16 PT, for boxes, pocket folders, business cards, etc. It looks like dull coated paper, and prints like coated paper. The ink colors are vibrant, and pop out.

Why should I use it anyway and not recycled paper?

Rock paper is terrific for labels that need to last a long time, and brochures that need additional strength. The rock paper is tear resistant, as well as being waterproof. Also,this paper has a distinct feel. When I give out business cards on rock paper, everyone comments on how cool this line feels. It has a satin type feel.

Is it more expensive to use rock paper in comparison with recycled paper?

Rock paper is less expensive than other durable sheets such as Yupo, the paper used in the award winning book by William McDonough and Michael Braungart "Cradle to Cradle". It is 70% less than Yupo. Compared to the higher priced, coated recycled grades and our 96 brightness lines in 100% PCW, it is approximately 20% higher in price, which may equate to a print price of 10% more.

Any cons?

Rock paper can only be printed via offset. However, we have found that we can print on an ink jet press, and I am making an accordion folded calender for next year. It will last the year, easily, in my wallet.

We specialize in printing on the rock paper line, TerraSkin. We use vegetable based inks and we like to seal the inks with a water based AQ. If you want to try rock paper for your next printing job or you want further information about it, please email me at greg@ecofriendlyprinter.com

Also, if you have any questions you would like us to address in future tips please email us to info@ecolibris.net .

Latest tips:

Green Printing Tip #17 - How do you save money on your next printing job?

Green Printing Tip #16 - Can green printing be done on a rush basis?

Green Printing Tip #15 - Are PDF files the best fit for every document?

You can find links to all the tips we published so far on our green printing tips page, which is part of our green printing tools & resources.

You can also find further valuable information on Greg Barber Company's website - http://www.gregbarberco.com.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing!

Bloggers - you can still find some great green books to review on our new green lit campaign!

We updated you last month about our new campaign, entitled "It's Time for a Green Book": 1 Day, 100 bloggers, 100 green books, 100 reviews.

As we mentioned the idea is to have 100 bloggers, who review books on regular basis, simultaneously publish on Tuesday, November 10 2009, their book review of a "green book" of their choice. We want to use the power of the internet and social media to promote "green" books and increase the awareness of both publishers and readers to the way books can be printed responsibly and sustainably.

We have great green books that take part in the campaign and we still have some that are available and are waiting for a blogger that will take them home for review such as:

No Such Thing as a Free Ride?: A Collection of Hitchhiking Tales by Simon and Tom Sykes (travel)

The Players by Margaret Sweatman (fiction)

Sustainable Sushi: A Guide to Saving the Oceans One Bite at a Time by Casson Trenor (food)

Sacred Commerce: Business as a Path of Awakening by Matthew Engelhart and Terces Engelhart (business)

The War in the Country - How the Fight to Save Rural Life will Shape Our Future by Thomas Pawlick (Environment)

The Horned Viper by Gill Harvey (Children's books)

You can find the full and updated list of available books at http://www.ecolibris.net/greenbookscampaign.pdf - just look at the books the books not colored (yet) in green.

If you're a blogger and you wish to review one of these books that would be great! Just email me at raz@ecolibris.net

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris


Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

Looking for a unique and affordable green birthday gift?

What's the connection between architect and designer Le Corbusier, actress and singer Amy Jo Johnson, Bond girl Britt Ekland and actress Elisabeth Shue?

They were all born on October 6! 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!

Elizabeth Baines' new book "Too Many Magpies" has been published and one tree is planted for each copy!

Congrats to author Elizabeth Baines! Last Thursday was the official publication date of her new book "Too Many Magpies"!

Not only that this is a great book that was already described as 'moving and compelling' by Sarah Salway, but it's also going green with Eco-Libris - as we mentioned here couple of months ago, the author, Elizabeth Baines, is collaborating with Eco-Libris to green up her book by planting one tree for every copy printed.

Too Many Magpies will be the second book published at Salt Publishing that we're working with after "The White Road and Other Stories" by Tania Hershman.

So what's this book is about? here's the description from its webpage:

Can we believe in magic and spells? Can we put our faith in science?

A young mother married to a scientist fears for her children’s safety as the natural world around her becomes ever more uncertain. Until, that is, she meets a charismatic stranger who seems to offer a different kind of power… But is he a saviour or a frightening danger? And, as her life is overturned, what is happening to her children whom she vowed to keep safe? Why is her son Danny now acting so strangely?

In this haunting, urgent and timely novel, Elizabeth Baines brings her customary searing insight to the problems of sorting our rational from our irrational fears and of bringing children into a newly precarious world. In prose that spins its own spell she exposes our hidden desires and the scientific and magical modes of thinking which have got us to where we are now.

The book is available now with 20% off from the Salt website.

You're also invited to visit Elizabeth Baines' blog, where you can find further details on forthcoming readings and of course her update about the publication date.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

Update on the lawsuit of BookLocker against Amazon and its green aspect

More and more news from the book world are coming these days from court rooms. Now it's an antitrust lawsuit that was brought against Amazon.com by Booklocker, an independent POD publisher.

Mainebiz reported that the lawsuit entered a new chapter after a federal judge denied Amazon's request to have the suit thrown out.

This case caught our attention as it's basically about the freedom of authors and publishers that use Amazon's marketplace services to choose their printer, which not only has important legal and financial consequences on the POD industry, but also environmental ones.

BookLocker is a small print on demand (POD) publishing company that is selling Amazon to sell books. The process is very simple: when a customer is ordering one of their books on Amazon, the company sends the order to a printing company contracted by BookLocker. The printer would then ship the book directly to the customer using an Amazon label.

So far, so good and this is a common practice used by many POD publishers. Now, here's the catch: as Mainebiz reports, in early 2008, Amazon began telling companies like BookLocker that it would only directly sell print-on-demand books printed by a specific printer, which happens to be a subsidiary of Amazon called BookSurge.

BookLocker claims in court this is an unfair business practice that amount to a violation of federal antitrust laws. By forcing publishers to use a specific printer, the lawsuit alleges Amazon is preventing access to the benefits of a free market. In addition, the quality and price that Amazon's subsidiary, BookSurge, offers is not on par with what BookLocker currently can find in the marketplace. "BookSurge charges higher fees than [BookLocker currently] pays for printing, and BookSurge prints books of lower quality than [BookLocker's] printer and other printers," the complaint says.

Amazon filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, denying BookLocker's claim of product tying, but about a month ago, Chief U.S. District Court Judge John Woodcock Jr. denied Amazon's motion to dismiss the class action lawsuit. Judge Woodcock said there was enough evidence in the case "to permit the plausible inference that Amazon is unlawfully forcing purchase of its (print-on-demand) service."

It will be very interesting to follow this case, as it has a great importance to the POD niche, which as Angela Hoy, who owns BookLocker with her husband Richard, told Mainebiz "is very tree-friendly and also more reasonable, financially, for authors and publishers alike." We definitely agree with her on this point.

We are pro-choice especially when it comes to printers, and not just for the sake of fairness, but also for the sake of sustainability. I have to admit I'm not familiar with the green practices of BookSurge, and actually I read they use FSC-certified paper with recycled content, but nevertheless, even if they're as green as it gets, I believe competition can push the envelope further for them as well as for other printers and make sure publishers will have more green printing options.

We'll keep following this interesting case and keep you posted so stay tuned!

Best,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

Green printing tip no. 17: How do you save money on your next print job?

We have another tip for you today on our weekly series of green printing tips, where we bring you information on green printing in collaboration with Greg Barber, an experienced eco-friendly printer.

Today Greg is discussing a question that is raised now more than ever when it comes to green printing:

How do you save money on your next print job?

Tip #17
Saving money is the first priority of many businesses and organizations who need print jobs, and we get many questions on how you can go green and still save money. As we wrote here before there's no contradiction between the two, and I would like to suggest couple of ideas on how it can be done.

1. Ask for alternative papers that are comparable to what you are looking for. I have a few ideas on saving you money.

- Use Sugar Cane Tree Free paper instead of Seed paper
Seed paper is one of the most expensive papers on the market today. My clients cringe when I tell them each 13 x 19 sheet is $4.00. If you can get away from having the seeds grow into flowers when disposing the paper, I like sugar Cane as a substitute. It is Tree Free, and looks recycled. It is 1/10th the price.

- Use 80# uncoated text in 100% PCW, when switching from 100# gloss recycled text for your next run
The uncoated text paper bulks higher than coated paper. The 80# text would feel as thick as the 100# coated text, and save you 25% in the amount of pounds of paper needed.This would also save money on postage for any mailing jobs.

- Use a 90 bright white grade, instead of 96 bright white for your newsletters
That would save you $700, if you needed 500 pounds of paper. Our 90 bright 100% PCW paper is half the price of our 96 brightness papers in 100% PCW. If you needed 5000 pounds of paper, that is a huge $7000 savings.

2. Let your printer or your agency suggest alternative page sizes
Before you design the project. Sometimes ½" can make a big difference in your print bill. I just asked a client to go from 10" x 4" to 9.5" x 4", on their flat size, and we saved our client a ton of money,. We ran a 13 x 19 sheet, and I could get 6 out of the 13 x 19 size sheet, instead of 4 out.

Another example is our own landfill brochure. We had a page size of 6.5 x 6.5 inch for our 28 page plus cover brochures. We could only get two up on our 13 x 19 size digital paper. By making the page size 6 x 6, we could run 3 up, and since we had 8 forms, that saved us over 30% on our print
costs.

Do you have more questions about going green and saving money on your next print job?you can email to greg@ecofriendlyprinter.com. If you have any questions you would like us to address in future tips please email us to info@ecolibris.net .

Latest tips:

Green Printing Tip #16 - Can green printing be done on a rush basis?

Green Printing Tip #15 - Are PDF files the best fit for every document?

Green Printing Tip #14 - Can directories be green?

You can find links to all the tips we published so far on our green printing tips page, which is part of our green printing tools & resources.

You can also find further valuable information on Greg Barber Company's website - http://www.gregbarberco.com.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing!

Kindle's Princeton Pilot not a Success

By way of Treehugger we learned about the results of a recent pilot program in Princeton University, using Amazon's Kindle e-reader device in place of books. Apparently, less than 2 weeks after 50 students were given Kindles to use in three of their courses, they were not satisfied.

It seems that while e-readers may have arguably come a long way as an alternative for reading books, at least the Kindle is far from being a suitable tool for academic learning.

From the Daily Princetonian:

"I hate to sound like a Luddite, but this technology is a poor excuse of an academic tool," said Aaron Horvath '10, a student in Civil Society and Public Policy. "It's clunky, slow and a real pain to operate."

Horvath said that using the Kindle has required completely changing the way he completes his coursework.

"Much of my learning comes from a physical interaction with the text: bookmarks, highlights, page-tearing, sticky notes and other marks representing the importance of certain passages -- not to mention margin notes, where most of my paper ideas come from and interaction with the material occurs," he explained. "All these things have been lost, and if not lost they're too slow to keep up with my thinking, and the 'features' have been rendered useless."

So, not there just yet. However, clearly e-book readers and the companies that manufacture them have been insinuating themselves into the future of education conversation. This pilot program is just one of similar news items such as the recently announced upcoming school library without books. What does this mean? That things are changing. This failed pilot is simply another source of feedback for the improved user interface for a device that one day will be able to provide students, their teachers and academics at large the right tools for paperless learning.