How about some green bookmooching?

We wanted to remind you of our partnership with BookMooch, a great book-swapping community, with a simple and user-friendly points system, where every time you give someone a book, you earn a point and can get any book you want from anyone else at BookMooch.

With more than 74,000 members from over 90 countires and about 500,000 book titles that are available, there's always a good book you can mooch. Once you've read a book, you can keep it forever or put it back into BookMooch for someone else, as you wish. And yes, it's totally free. You only pay for mailing your books.

BookMooch and Eco-Libris are partnering to offer Green Mooching, a special incentive for BookMoochers to balance out their books, and to Eco-Libris fans to start mooching some books.

So what's the incentive? For every 10 books you balance out with Eco-Libris you will receive one BookMooch point you can then use to mooch a book online for free. If you don't have a BookMooch account yet go get one :)

The process is very simple – Email us your BookMooch username after you make a purchase on Eco-Libris, or enter your BookMooch username in the comments box during the payment process. We will credit your BookMooch account accordingly.

And while you're visiting our website, don't forget to check our green gift giveaway, where you can also get free "green" books and gift cards for Strand Bookstore and BookSwim for balancing out 25 books or more.

Yours,

A new book, Kami Jin, is going green with Eco-Libris!

We are happy to announce a new collaboration with author Lloyd Kaneko on his new book "Kami Jin". One tree will be planted with Eco-Libris for every printed copy of the new book!

As you can see in the photo above, our "One tree planted for this book" logo was added to book's cover, as a constant reminder to readers of the author's commitment to the environment.

About the author: Lloyd Kaneko is a former Staff Writer for Drum Corps News, and has written for various other magazines, newsletters, and blogs including Scenario.SC. and Allvoices. He also writes screenplays and is a member of the Alameda Writers Group. Lloyd has Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing from California State University, Long Beach and has studied creative writing under Dora Beale Polk.

He has studied screen writing through the Writers Guild of America, West. Lloyd has judged screenplays for the Honolulu International Film Festival, Mexico International Film Festival, Canadian International Film Fesival, and the Las Vegas International Film Festival.

About the book: Kami Jin is a tale of two worlds according to the diary of A. Gordon Sakata II of the 23rd Century. Gordon records an era of despair and misery on Earth as life in the Republic of North America includes a jobless rate of 95%. People are homeless: poverty and starvation is global and governments around the world are ineffective in solving the crisis. Corporations have taken over governments, taken away the basic rights of citizens such as freedom of speech and expression and have replaced many people with droids and robots.

Citizens of nations who once lived comfortably in homes, now struggle to survive in streets lined with cardboard condos. When war breaks out, Earth finally meets its doom, but through the miracle of time travel, it is given a second chance. Gordon is saved and taken to a utopian planet mirroring Earth’s orbit. There, inhabitants are treated equally: poverty, homelessness and starvation are non-existent, and everyone is paid $25-million annually in universal life credits by the Universe, regardless of social status.

The quality of health care and education is next to none. Inhabitants’ brains are so advanced that they travel by merely willing themselves to their destination, rather than using conventional vehicles, yet, they do not manufacture any weapons of any kind. The world is one planet, one nation. Gordon vows to right a sinking ship – at least provide hope for the disadvantaged of the world. He returns to Earth to fulfill his life’s promise.

You can buy the book through the Wordclay Bookstore. E-Book editions in 7 different formats available through Smashwords. You can also follow Lloyd on twitter - @kamijin1951.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

5 comments on How Green Is My iPad?

The New York Times published last Sunday an Op-Ed piece, How Green Is My iPad?, written by Daniel Goleman and Gregory Norris. Norris and Goleman present there the life cycle analysis (LCA) they made, comparing e-books and physical books in an attempt to figure out "which is more environmentally friendly: an e-reader or an old-fashioned book?". Their conclusion was as followed:

So, how many volumes do you need to read on your e-reader to break even?

With respect to fossil fuels, water use and mineral consumption, the impact of one e-reader payback equals roughly 40 to 50 books. When it comes to global warming, though, it’s 100 books; with human health consequences, it’s somewhere in between.

This Op-Ed was no accidental. A day earlier Apple released its iPad and as it reported later on 300,000 iPads were sold in just one day (including pre-orders). So it definitely looks like there's a greater need than ever in such a life cycle analysis and we congratulate Goleman and Norris for their important work. Do we have any comment or feedback? of course we do :) Here they are:

1. Looking for more transparency

Goleman and Norris justifiably mention that "some technical details — for instance, how those special screens are manufactured — are not publicly available". Many times we called here Amazon, Apple and other e-reader manufacturers to be more transparent and share with the public the information required for preparing a full LCA. We believe that greater transparency will work in their benefit eventually and hope they will show everyone they have nothing to hide.

At the same time, I was hoping to get more details on the LCA itself. The newspaper included just the summary of it, and although I'm sure Goleman and Norris did a great job, I was hoping they will publish somewhere the full assessment, sharing with the rest of us all the data and their and calculations. I'm sure it will only be beneficial for the process.

2. Where are the trees?

According to the 2008 'Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry' report, which was prepared by the Green Press Initiative (GPI) and the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), the biggest contributor to the industry's footprint was using virgin paper - forest and forest harvest are responsible to 62.7% of the industry's total carbon emissions. Cleantech's report "The Environmental Impact of Amazon's Kindle" also stated that "Paper is responsible for almost 75 percent of the publishing industry’s carbon footprint".

And still, I couldn't find any word on Goleman and Norris' LCA about trees and the environmental impact of their harvest to make paper. They only mention minerals and water. Did I miss anything here?

3. What's the footprint of driving to your bookstore?

Goleman and Norris calculate that "Driving five miles to the bookstore and back causes about 10 times the pollution and resource depletion as producing it.". Now, if by pollution they also refer to CO2, then I've got a little problem with the result.

The LCA doesn't say how much CO2 a physical book pollutes, but according to the Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts report, it's 8.85 lbs, in carbon dioxide terms. The Cleantech's report says it's 16.4 lbs per a book. Now, if we look at the CO2 emissions of a car driving 10 miles, then according to NativeEnergy Travel Calculator, it's between 4.4-15.4 lbs, depending on the car you're driving. In any case, it doesn't seems to be close to 10 times the pollution of producing a book, which can roughly be calculated from the two reports we mentioned as 5.5-10.25 lbs (if you take into consideration just the harvesting part which is 62.5% of the total carbon footprint).

4. So which option is more eco-friendly?

Well, if we look at the results and ignore for a minute all the missing information that is still not available or the differences between the e-readers, then it's still a tough call. As they mention in the results, the break even is anywhere between 40-100 books, depending on the factors you're taking into consideration.

According to the Cleantech report 1 billion books are sold every year in the U.S. With a population of about 300 million people it means every person in the U.S. is reading about 3.3 books a year. A survey of AP in 2007 found that "A quarter of US adults say they read no books at all in the past year, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll. The typical person claimed to have read four books in the last year and, excluding those who had not read any books at all, the usual number of books read was seven." Another source is the Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts report, which mentions that 3.1 billion books were sold in 2006, which is an average of about 10 books per a person.

In all, it seems that it can take anywhere between 4-13 years for an average reader to reach the lower break even point of 40 books. Will that be enough time? well, we'll need to see what will be the lifespan of the iPad, but I've got the feeling that under these circumstances, for an average reader, physical books might be a greener option. If you're an avid reader, the iPad or the Kindle is probably the preferred alternative from an environmental perspective.

5. The best option - walking to your local library

Goleman and Norris write at the end of their piece that "All in all, the most ecologically virtuous way to read a book starts by walking to your local library." We couldn't agree more. The only question is how many people actually use their library services and walk, or even bike, all the way there?

More resources on the e-Books vs. physical books environmental debate can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Green printing tip no. 40: How to green up your banners?

We are back today with a new tip 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 talking about a way to green up banners, using no other than recycled plastic bottles!

How to green up your banners?

Tip #40

Today we have many more green options when it comes to making banners. For example, we have been printing biodegradable banners from bioflex, which will biodegrade in a landfill in 5 years.

We also have a natural, new environmental banner. Made from PET, which stands for polyethylene terephthalate, a plastic resin and a form of polyester. PET is the type of plastic labeled with the #1 code on or near the bottom of bottles and containers and is commonly used to package soft drinks, water, juice, peanut butter, salad dressings and oil, cosmetics and household cleaners.

In other words, these banners are made from recycled plastic bottles and containers.
This is a winner. We keep the plastic from going to the landfills and we make the recycled plastic into beautiful banners.

We have supplied the U.S Green Building Council, now called Urban Green Council, and CENYC, now called GrowNYC, and many other environmental groups with these durable and terrific printing banners, made from recycled plastic. Add the ceramic industry to our network of
believers. NCECA used our banners in Philadelphia at their annual show.

Here's an example of a PET banner we did for Ride Amigos, which arranges rides to events by grouping riders together. This way it saves fuel and money for these people. Also, many environmental riders have become friends and share their resources.

Most of the designers want to know how to create the files for these banners, so they won't look low res. My simple advice is this. Write the two dimensions down, such as 4' x 8' and then divide both dimensions in half. With the above size, you would come up with 2' x 4', when dividing both dimensions in half. Now save the files at 400 DPI, for the half size.

We will enlarge the banner 4 times to 4 x 8 foot, and the resulting DPI is 100 DPI, at the size we want. We can now print your banners with the quality you desire.

PET banners look like Vinyl banners, but are environmental and look and last as good as the non environmental, vinyl banners that we need to eliminate. And it gets even better - PET banners are cheaper than vinyl banners! Our price for PET banners is $8 per square foot. Last but not least - PET banners will biodegrade in a landfill.

For additional information on PET banners, please visit www.gregbarberco.com and www.ecofriendlyprinter.com. You can email Greg at greg@gregbarberco.com.

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.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting green printing!

We have a winner on our "Story of Stuff" audiobook giveaway!

We announced about a week ago on a giveaway of the new audiobook "Story of Stuff" (courtesy of the publisher, Simon & Simon audio) to one of our Facebook fans, and we have a winner: Marc V. Rock-Steady.

Congrats Marc! This is a great audiobook and we hope you will enjoy listening to it.

More giveaways are coming, so if you're not yet part of our Facebook fans, we invite you to join us there.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Your resource for the future of publishing

Still not sure about the iPad? see what David Pogue has to say

After months of expectations, Apple's iPad hits the stores today. If you're still confused about the iPad capabilities and its pros and cons, check out a funny and informative video made by David Pogue of the New York Times (including a presentation of how the iPad functions as a eReader):

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

What is happening to Dunder Mifflin's core business?

It might look like a weird question, but you have to understand I was just about to see another episode of my favorite show, The Office, when I read the following news: "A record-high 63.4 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling in 2009."

Wow, I said to myself, this is impressive. I should read a little more about it. The Office can wait few more minutes (I watch it on Hulu, so there's no time pressure..).

I found the news on paperrecycles.org, which is the website of the Paper Industry Association Council (PIAC) and it came from the American Forest & Paper Association (AF&PA). It added that "this is great news for the industry and the environment, and exceeds the industry’s 60 percent recovery goal three years ahead of schedule. To balance growing global demand for recovered fiber and decreased paper consumption, increasing recovery nationwide remains a priority."

Something got my attention here - 'decreased paper consumption'. I checked the figures provided by PIAC and saw it's true - since 2004 the supply of paper is in decline. Check it out:

	Supply1 (000 tons)	Recovered (000 tons)	Recovery Rate2
1999	105,316	46,818	44.5%
2000	102,810	47,311	46.0%
2001	97,395	46,996	48.3%
2002	98,949	47,645	48.2%
2003	98,018	49,255	50.3%
2004	101,884	50,187	49.3%
2005	99,613	51,272	51.5%
2006	100,665	53,314	53.0%
2007	97,007	54,325	56.0%
2008	89,838	51,822	57.7%
2009	78,902	50,036	63.4%

Source: paperrecycles.org

And it's not a small decline: from 2004 to 2009 the supply of paper in the U.S. saw a 29% decline. Now, firstly this is one of the main reasons the recovered rate is relatively high - there's also a decline in the absolute number of recovered paper, but the supply has just decreased in a faster paste.

That's also the conclusion of the report State of Green Business 2010, although they have different figures:

For the first time since 2001, the year of the last national economic downturn, the amount of paper recovered in the U.S declined, by about 2.5 million tons. But at the same time, total paper consumption dropped nearly three times as much, so the overall percentage of paper recovery rose. In fact, the intensity of paper use — the amount of paper used per dollar of GDP — improved by the largest margin since the boom year of 2000.

And the decrease in supply is not just in the U.S. Clive Suckling, Global Leader Forest, Paper and Packaging at PricewaterhouseCoopers wrote in their report, Forest Paper and Packaging Deals. Branching Out – 2009 Annual Review, that "Market conditions for the Forest, paper and packaging (FPP) sectors remained very diffi cult in 2009. In the latter half of the year, conditions began to improve in some of the emerging markets, while demand in North America and Europe remained at historically low levels."

So it this trend going to continue? And is it a good thing? I believe that the answer is Yes for the first question. We see that the decrease in supply started couple of years before the beginning of the recession (which might got things worst of course) and is likely to continue as companies (and individuals) that try to save in their paper consumption will continue to do so, as they figure out they're reducing costs by saving on paper (see our paperless office post). Other trends as the transition from print to digital in the publishing industry will contribute to it as well.

The second question is more complicated - paper is not a bad thing in itself. Producing it unsustainably is the problem, not to mention its end of life. So even though we see improvement in the recovery rate, there's still much more to be done about the production of paper. Mandy Hagith, author of the recommended book "Paper Trails: From Trees to Trash - The True Cost of Paper" explained the problem:

"No one likes to think of trees being felled, but many of us have a cosy image in our heads that it all comes from recycling or "sustainable" woodlands growing in neat rows, perhaps somewhere in Sweden. It's a myth. Globally, 70 per cent of the 335 million tons of paper the world uses each year comes from natural, un-farmed sources. In Canada, the UK's biggest source of pulp, 90 per cent of its output comes directly from its ancient forests."

So the bottom line is that we don't want to see Dunder Mifflin going out of business and hope they be more successful under the new ownership of Sabre. We just want to see their main product becomes more sustainable!

Yours,

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!