BookMooch is a very cool book-swapping community and a dear partner, so a new year is a good excuse (not that we need one) to remind you of our collaboration with them and how you can benefit from it!
BookMooch is based on a very 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 all over the world and 500,000 available book titles, 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 have partnered last year to offer Green Mooching, a special incentive to BookMoochers to balance out their books, and to Eco-Libris fans to start mooching some books.
For every 10 books you balance out you will receive a free 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. As we wrote here before, we believe that book swapping is a great concept: you can find books you are looking for at no cost, give books you want others to enjoy and of course benefit the environment. It's very similar to the concept of a library - maximizing the usage of every printed book minimizes the need to print new ones and saves many trees from being cut down.
Don't get me wrong - we don't want people to stop buying new books, but as long as books are printed mostly from virgin paper, we would like to see maximum usage for each printed copy. Therefore, we support the concept of book swapping and communities such as BookMooch.
No only that - from some data gathered it appears that the free swapping actually stimulate new book sales, as well as bring more people to read more books, so all in all it's this model is also beneficial for the book industry as well. You actually don't need this data to get to this conclusion with the growing free content that is provided by authors and publishers online to promote their books' sales.
For more information please check BookMooch website - www.bookmooch.com
Inspired by the new President, our search of green resolutions for the new year takes us today to Chicago.
Our guest today on "My Green Resolution for 2009" series is Amy Guth, author of Three Fallen Women (So New Media Publishing, 2006), founder and director of Pilcrow Lit Fest in Chicago and the new managing editor at So New Publishing. And yes, she also lives in Chicago.
Amy Guth has also a forthcoming second novel entitled "Light of Waters". Previously, she has written for The Believer, Monkeybicycle, Ninth Letter, Four Magazine, Bookslut, The Complete Meal and Outcry, among others.
As we mentioned above she is the newly-appointed managing editor at So New Publishing. She is also an assistant fiction editor at 42 Opus and hosts the monthly Fixx Reading Series in Chicago. You're welcome to read more about Amy on her website (http://guthagogo.com) and blog (http://www.bigmouthindeedstrikesagain.blogspot.com).
We collaborated with Amy on the Pilcrow Lit Fest last year and plan to do it again this year (the festival will take place on May 17-23, 2009 in Chicago. Check out the fest website for more information - http://pilcrowlitfest.com).
Hello Amy. What's your green resolution for 2009?
Every year, one of my resolutions is always the same, and that is to do everything a bit better, greater, larger than I did it the year before. That includes maintaining the existing level of green-living I practice in my home, diet, work, lifestyle and home office, but also to look for ways in the new year to improve in each area, which I mostly do by staying abreast of developments in sustainability, environmental issues and product development.
What's your green wish for 2009?
In 2008 I founded Pilcrow Lit Fest, a small press festival based in Chicago and took steps from the beginning to make the festival as eco-friendly as possible.
Near the end of the year, I also stepped into the role as managing editor at So New Publishing, the press with which my own first novel was released. In 2009 I want to not only give Pilcrow Lit Fest and So New my very best, but also foster as sustainable and low-impact environment as possible in both.
Today there was a big celebrations in Washington and we followed the Inauguration of President Obama with excitement, joy and hope for a better and greener future to come now.
We also have a small celebration of our own with a new collaboration we're happy to announce on. Eco-Libris is partnering with Zinerrific, an online magazine subscription retailer. Zinerrific will be offering their customers the option to balance out any subscriptions they buy through Zinerrific with an Eco-Libris tree-planting! To show their commitment to sustainability, Zinerrific will match every Eco-Libris tree planting purchase with a second tree!
Here's some information on our new partner - Zineriffic sells magazine subscriptions at the lowest prices allowed by publishers (in most cases) and they have an inventory of over 1400 magazine titles available for sale through their site.
Zinerrific pride themselves on their large selection of magazines, ease-of-ordering, fully honoring customer privacy, and readily-available customer service through email or their toll-free telephone number (1- 877-262-7641).
Sundance Film Festival is a great film festival. This year it's also very green. Maybe greener than ever.
As Michelle Meyers reports on CNET News, many of the films presented at this year's festival have a green theme.Meyers reports that five out of the 32 documentaries competing at this year's festival fall squarely in the category of environmental films and that that's just a small fraction of the number of such films submitted to compete at the festival.
With a record of great green films that had their premiere at the festival, such as Who Killed the Electric Car and of course An Inconvenient Truth, there's definitely a lot of expectation around these films.
And there also green parties at Sundance! Michael Cieply reported on the NYT that today in the evening evening, green.msn.com and Self magazine plan to join Greenhouse, a New York City nightclub using environmentally sustainable materials, in sponsoring what they called a big, “ecofriendly” party for “Crude” at the Sky Lodge in Park City.
Here is a little taste of some of the green films that you can see in the festival, which runs until January 25 in ark City, Utah (descriptions of the films are taken of their web pages on the festival's website):
Author Colin Beavan and his family are pictures of liberal complacency—sophisticated, takeout-addicted New Yorkers who refuse to let moral qualms interfere with good old-fashioned American consumerism. Then Colin turns things upside down. For his next book, he announces he's becoming No Impact Man, testing whether making zero environmental impact adversely affects happiness.The hitch is he needs his wife, Michelle—an espresso-guzzling, Prada-worshipping Business Week writer—and their toddler to join the experiment. A year without electricity, cars, toilet paper, and nonlocal food isn’t going to be a walk in the park. Or is it?
Inspired by William Bryant Logan’s acclaimed book Dirt, the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, directors Bill Benenson and Gene Rosow employ a colorful combination of animation, vignettes, and personal accounts from farmers, physicists, church leaders, children, wine critics, anthropologists, and activists to learn about dirt—where it comes from, how we regard (or disregard) it, how it sustains us, the way it has become endangered, and what we can do about it.
Benenson and Rosow find answers everywhere: in tiny villages that dare to rise up to battle giant corporations to trendy organic farms; from prison horticultural programs to scientists who discover connections with soil that can offset the damage from global warming. The fresh and generous spirit of Dirt! The Movie is simple and energizing. You may walk into the theatre on asphalt, carpet, and cement, but you will likely walk out with a rekindled connection to the living, dark, rich soil that lies beneath you and a mind set on cultivating a new future.
Director Robert Stone concocts an inspiring and hopeful work in Earth Days, a feature documentary that recounts the history of the modern environmental movement from its beginnings nearly four decades ago.
Environmental activism really began with the first Earth Day on April 22, 1970, and precipitated an unexpected and galvanizing effect on the national psyche.Told through the eyes of nine very divergent witnesses, including a secretary of the interior, Stewart Udall, who actually cared about the environment; a biologist, Paul Ehrlich; a congressman, Pete McCloskey; and an astronaut, Rusty Schweickart, Earth Days is a visually stunning, globe-spanning chronicle of watershed events and consciousness-changing realizations that prompted a new awareness: the post–World War II American dream of a future world created by scientific progress, new technology, and economic expansion was rapidly changing into a nightmare. The End of the Line by Rupert Murray Based on the book by Charles Clover, The End of the Line explores the devastating effect that overfishing is having on fish stocks and the health of our oceans.With Clover as his guide, Sundance veteran Rupert Murray (Unknown White Male) crisscrosses the globe, examining what is causing the dilemma and what can be done to solve it.Industrial fishing began in the 1950s. High-tech fisheries now trawl the oceans with nets the size of football fields. Species cannot survive at the rate they are being removed from the sea.
Add in cofactors of decades of bad science, corporate greed, small-minded governments, and escalating consumer demand, and we’re left with a crisis of epic proportions. Ninety percent of the big fish in our oceans are now gone.Murray interweaves glorious footage from both underwater and above with shocking scientific testimony to paint a vivid and alarming profile of the state of the sea. The ultimate power of The End of the Line is that it moves beyond doomsday rhetoric to proffer real solutions. Chillingly topical, The End of the Line drives home the message: the clock is ticking, and the time to act is now.
Can 30,000 plaintiffs from five Indigenous Ecuadoran tribes find justice from Chevron, one of the world’s largest oil producers? Who is responsible for the unconscionable dumping of 18 billion gallons of toxic oil waste in the Ecuadoran Amazon, poisoning the most biodiverse place on the planet?
Filmmaker Joe Berlinger’s latest documentary picks up the thread of the infamous ""Amazon Chernobyl"" case, a 13-year-old battle between communities nearly destroyed by oil drilling and development and one of the biggest companies on earth. In a sophisticated take on the classic David and Goliath story, Berlinger took three years to craft a cinema vérité portrait centering on the charismatic lawyers in the U.S. and Ecuador who have doggedly pursued the case against all of the forces a corporation can bring into courts of law.
Though the Ecuadorans and their perspective receive the lion's share of screen time, the film makes a concerted effort to show the case from all sides: from the scientists and lawyers employed by Chevron, to Ecuadoran judges, to celebrity activists and humanitarian organizers, to the role of the media, to the dramatic intervention of Rafael Correa himself, the first Ecuadoran president to sympathize with the Indigenous perspective. In a tale that spans the globe, Crude looks beyond compassion for the disenfranchised and the corruption of those in power to ask how justice itself is being defined in the twenty-first century. The film's website
We continue with our journey looking to learn more about our partners' green resolutions for 2009, and today we have a very special guest: Dr. Anne Hallum, Founder and Director of the Alliance for International Reforestation (AIR), which is one of Eco-Libris planting partners.
AIR is working mainly in Guatemala, where it plants trees and is involved in other activities such as providing environmental education for teachers and farmers, digging wells, building fuel-efficient brick ovens. AIR was founded by Dr. Anne Hallum in 1992 at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida, where she serves as a Political Science Professor.
In its first year of operations Eco-Libris planted more than 25,000 trees with AIR. You are welcome to learn more about it from our annual assessment of these operations. Dr. Anne Hallum and residents reforesting a hillside near Xetonox, 2008. Photo courtsey of AIR. Hello Anne. What's your professional green resolution for 2009? To plant even more trees in Guatemala, and to write successful grants for expansion. I will also be teaching two Environmental politics classes this semester, so another professional resolution is to engage and motivate students to “green the campus”(to buy Eco-Libris stickers, for instance).
If you have a personal green resolution for 2009, what is it? My personal green resolution is to make our backyard more of a refuge for birds:more birdbaths, bird houses, planting more trees, and leaving any dead ones standing for woodpeckers. Almost 80 percent of North American bird species are in decline from habitat loss. I also resolve to continue to reduce my own use of water and carbon fuels….
What’s your green wish for 2009? My green wish is for world leaders to quickly negotiate a new Protocol for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and to give it some teeth.(Meanwhile, I wish for environmental activism on the ground to continue to spread.)
If you have any other greetings, please feel free to add them. The AIR staff in Guatemala send heartfelt thanks to every person who bought Eco-Libris stickers, and to every bookstore and publisher who sold them.We have several tree nurseries in Guatemala, dedicated to growing trees in your name. Any other plans for 2009? AIR-Guatemala was just awarded a small grant from the United Nations (UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues), to build more fuel-efficient stoves!This is a prestigious recognition that AIR works directly with indigenous people. Every stove conserves a ton of firewood a year; and each family with a stove volunteers in planting many trees.We also plan to plant trees to protect the MayuelasRiver watershed, in a brand new region of Guatemala.
The Alliance for International Reforestation (AIR) is a non-profit organization working to make a difference for the people of Guatemala and Nicaragua. AIR was founded by Political Science Professor Anne M. Hallum in 1992 at Stetson University in DeLand, Florida. AIR's objective is to assist local communities in Central America to conserve their environment through reforestation, sustainable farming, and education. So far, AIR planted more than 3 million trees in Guatemala and Nicaragua. In 2004, AIR was named The Best Environmental NGO in Guatemala for 2004, by the national government's forestry institute in Guatemala.
AIR works to initiate continuous reforestation programs at the community level. All of AIR's projects are based on the philosophy that direct community involvement in all phases of the projects, from their design to their implementation, is essential for the success and sustainability of project activities.
The daily destruction of forests that occurs in Guatemala is a serious problem - each year more than 1620 square kilometers are deforested. This has already had a severe negative impact on the environment: water sources are quickly disappearing, 65% of Guatemalan soil is considered highly susceptible to erosion and air quality is deteriorating rapidly. In addition, deforestation leads to the depletion of essential nutrients in the soils, especially those used for agricultural activities. As these soils become drained of nutrients and no longer support agriculture, populations migrate to virgin areas and conduct slash-and-burn activities, continuing the cycle of deforestation.
The replanting of trees on community lands, in addition to otherwise conserving the environment, replenishes soil nutrients, and therefore decelerates the destruction of the virgin forests that remain in Guatemala.
Women who work at AIR's nursery in San Andres ,Itzapa, Guatemala, which is supported by Eco-Libris. AIR has worked here for six years, producing and planting tens of thousands of trees. Photo courtsey of AIR. So far on "My Green Resolution for 2009":
As part of Eco-Libris' ongoing content partnership with Green Options Media, we feature a post that was originally published by Tina Casey on January 14 on Eco Child's Play. Today's post gives you few ideas how to green a very special place: your local library.
Library use is surging upwards, as the economy surges downwards. More people are saving money by sharing community-owned books, computers, and other resources. That’s certainly the green way to go, but what about the libraries themselves? How green is your local library?
While some new libraries are LEED-certified, your library might be old, inefficient, and in need of expensive retrofits that it can’t afford. Let’s read on to see how you can help your local library go green, no matter what kind of building it’s in.
1. Your Library: Go Early and Often. First things first: if you’re a new parent and you haven’t taken your child to the library yet, do it. Don’t be shy about bringing an infant or crawler. For a while now, the trend has been to include more stuffed animals and other attractions for people who prefer crawling around to reading a book. If an eruption seems immanent you can always cut the visit short.
Green Tip: As your child grows out of kid-sized play tables, easels or seating cushions, ask if you can donate them to your local library.
2. Green Your Trip to the Library. Is your library near mass transit? If it is, include a bus or train ride in your library routine. Pack some healthy snacks and a couple of commuter-friendly activities in case things bog down. Car-pooling with another family, walking, or biking are other green travel options.
3. Bring a Book, Leave a Book at Your Library. Does your library have a book freecycling rack, or a used book sale room? If not, suggest one. It gives every library patron in the community a convenient place to recycle their used books, without making an extra trip to donate them at another location.
4. Toy Lending at Your Library. Does your library lend toys? Toy lending libraries are another popular trend, and another great way to share and reuse community resources.
5. Help Your Library Green Up. Does your library recycle? Does it use green cleaning supplies? If your library seems a little behind the curve, ask about volunteering to help them introduce some simple, basic office greening into their operations.
6. Green the Air Around Your Library. Do cars tend to idle on the library grounds? Ask about setting up and publicizing a no-idling policy.
7. Green the Grounds Around Your Library. Does your library have a rain garden? Could it use some strategically located shade trees? See if you can partner up with a local landscaper or nursery to help your library transform a resource-guzzling lawn into an educational greenscape.
8. Green the Movies at Your Library Does your library show films? Ask if they’ll screen a green documentary. The list of entertaining docs on green topics is growing. Supersize Me and Kilowatt Ours are two that come to mind.
Friends: Does your local library have an interesting or unusual way to go green? Let me know, and I’ll share the info in a future post.
"My name is Greg Barber and I specialize in environmental printing. " This is the first line on the homepage of Greg Barber Company, an eco-friendly printer and also the printer that prints Eco-Libris' stickers and flyers.
Greg is also one of the most experienced people in the area of green printing and we thought it would be very interesting to hear from him what does it mean to be an environmental printer and what's going on in this market. We weren't wrong. This interview is a great opportunity to get a glance of the growing market of environmental printing, which as you will see is becoming not only beneficial for the environment, but also for businesses' bottom line.
Hello Greg. You describe yourself as an environmental printer. Can you tell us what that means? We are eco-friendly in our paper, inks, energy and our recycling of our waste. We specialize in printing on 100% post-consumer waste recycled paper, rock paper, and tree free paper ,and we use soy based inks, for our offset printing, and 100% non toxic toner for our digital work.Our energy is primarily Wind energy, and the paper we stock comes from mills that get their energy from either Wind or BioGas.
How long have you been an environmental printer? how did you get into the business of eco-friendly printing? I started at the 20th anniversary of Earth Day in 1990. I saw middle school children celebrating Earth Day and I decided to join them by specializing in Environmental Printing.
Is it true that it's more expensive to print on recycled paper? if it is, what's the premium you currently need to pay for it? This is the #1 question asked me. So much so, that I put that question on my website http://www.gregbarberco.com/ at the very top a link that says "Is Environmental Printing More Expensive?" My answer is it is not more expensive if you use the 100% PCW recycled paper from my firm.
Our paper is competitive to the minimum recycled paper or non recycled paper prices. We have a wide range of equipment to select the most effective press to keep the pricing competitive.If you need a small run in 4 color, we will probably print digitally. We have 2 color up to 8 color offset equipment and web presses for the very large inquiries, and I partner with several plants, that are leaders in the environmental movement. My partners were hand picked by me for their environmental set up, their price structure, and their response to timing needed by my clients.
Why do you think so many publishers of paper-based products such as books, newspapers and magazines are not going green yet? is it the cost? availability? quality of paper? or another reason? Magazines and newspapers use ground wood based paper and those sheets are much less expensive, and thus price is the reason. The paper mills we use sell higher quality recycled coated paper for the higher quality runs.Upscale fashion type magazines, brochures, annual reports, flyers, 4 color books etc, use the more expensive recycled coated and uncoated lines we carry.
Who are your customers and what is important for them when it comes to environmental printing? We sell to upscale environmental entrepreneurs, ad agencies, graphic designers, and corporate clients. My website is listed #1 in Google and everyday I see clients from all walks of the business world. We print postcards for art galleries, greeting cards for start up companies, business cards for anyone.
I printed stationary, postcards, envelopes, greeting cards, etc, for an agency for Coca Cola, the VIP material needed at the Olympics in China, They selected mostly 100% PCW paper and soy inks.The common denominator for our clients is using paper with the highest post-consumer waste content, the correct inks, no chlorine for bleaching our papers, and they like to know that we are FSC certified.
Also, most people like to know we have a wide range of paper to select from. Tree Free lines , such as Sugar Cane, Bamboo, Hemp, and paper made from fruit plants mixedwith PCW.We stock lemon, mango, coffee, and banana papers. We also have paper made from Rock & Minerals called Terraskin. And price. We remain competitive by selecting a few environmental grades we feel are the most environmental, and buying those papers in bulk. We save our clients a lot of money on the small to medium size runs, that can be expensive for most printers buying small lots of stock for the smaller jobs..
How is the economic slowdown influencing the green printing market? We are in a tough market. Business is off and payments are slower. But, I feel environmental printers are not affected as much as non environmental printers. Green printing is important to our clients, and they don't want to go back to non recycled printing. My clients are mostly small to medium buyers of printing and they still need to advertise. The large printers that specialize in magazine or book work are hurt more, as advertising is off 50%.
What are the current trends (if any) you see in the market? We see Direct Response, Personalized Printing going way up, and I am spending a lot of my time promoting this type of printing. Clients can track results and then decide if they should increase their budgets in this type of printing, especially when sales go up.
We own XMPIE, the software that can take a supplied excel spread sheet that has a lot of personal variables included in the columns, and create PURL'S, or Personal URL.If I was on the mailing list, my postcard which has my name and my preference in the copy, andmy own web link to go to. It might be www.gregbarber/greenoffer.com. Once I go to that link, I might see a special offer from the client that is directly speaking to me. We find sales go up 500 percent with personalized PURL printing. You can test this on a 500 postcard print run, as we do personalized printing digitally. We can print 500 different postcards digitally, that change name, color of pictures, copy, and the personal links to visit.
You also started to publish books lately - can you tell us about it? We print mostly 4 color books on 100% post-consumer waste paper. We find our clients like that we have no minimums and many times we print 100 books digitally to see if the books will sell, and then we can print the larger runs via offset. We did this for my first book, "How The Land Of Litter Became The Kingdom Of Clean". We printed 100, 6 x 9 size books, 48 pages plus cover, in 4 color on 70# Enviro Text and 100# Enviro Cover.
The test was a lot more per book than when we next went to 1000 books and then onto 5000 books. But, it's safer than to print 1000 books and not selling them. Land Of Litter is very popular and teaches kids that it does matter to be environmental.
Thank you Greg!
If you want to learn more about Greg's printing company and their green opreations, you're welcome to check out their website - http://www.gregbarberco.com/
Founded in 2007, Eco-Libris is a green company working to green up the book industry in the digital age by promoting the adoption of green practices in the book industry, balancing out books by planting trees, and helping to make e-reading greener.
To achieve these goals Eco-Libris is working with book readers, publishers, authors, bookstores and others in the book industry worldwide. So far Eco-Libris balanced out over 179,500 books, which results in more than 200,000 new trees planted with its planting partners in developing countries.
