Eco-Libris is collaborating with BookSwim on a special holiday gift card program

Eco-Libris is happy to announce on a new collaboration, this time with BookSwim, the premier online book rental service.

BookSwim launched yesterday a Holiday Gift Card Program to sponsor the planting of holiday evergreen trees with the help of Eco-Libris. For every online gift card purchased at BookSwim.com during the 2007 holiday gift season, BookSwim promises the planting of a new Holiday evergreen tree with Eco-Libris.

BookSwim, established June 2006, is the first full-service online paperback and hardcover book rental library club allowing subscribers to rent books shipped directly to their door with no late fees and free shipping.

The company is based in Monroe, NJ but offers book rental service nationwide ranging from hardcover new release novels to classics, nonfiction bestsellers to children's books.

Book club subscription plans range from under $15 to $36 per month and allow up to 11 books borrowed out at a time and returned in a pre-paid bag, but members are also given the option to buy.

George Burke, chief marketing officer, explains the idea behind the gift card: "book rental gift cards make great last minute gifts for parents, for seniors who may not be able to make it to the bookstore or library, kids who need a constant supply of fresh books, and of course friends and coworkers. And now, the Holiday gift giver can be proud of the dual nature of the honorable gifts of both reading and replenishing nature."

You are welcome to check it out at BookSwim's website.

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!

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

I read yesterday on USA TODAY on Oprah Winfrey's book club new selection - The Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett. This is a great book and a great choice!

Eco-Libris believes that this 973-pages book should not be only a celebration of a great book and the joy of reading, but also an opportunity to discuss the urgent need in sustainable reading, which does not harm the environment. I read in the article that New American Library has printed 612,000 new "deluxe" Oprah editions. That's a lot of paper and a lot of trees that are cut down for this special edition.

Eco-Libris aims to raise the awareness to the environmental impacts of using paper for the production of books and for the need in printing books in an eco-friendly manner.

Therefore, we are having a special offer for all the eco-conscious readers out there that want to buy the new edition of the book:

If you buy the book and you want to help the environment, please send us an email to info@ecolibris.net with your address and the first sentence of Chapter 4 (just to show us you bought the book..). Eco-Libris will balance out the book for the first 50 people who email us with the right sentence.

It means that one tree will be planted by our planting partners to balance out the paper used for the book. And we will send you our sticker made of recycled paper saying “One tree planted for this book” you can later proudly display on the book's sleeve showing your commitment to the environment. And yes, we'll send it in an envelope made of recycled paper.

We truly hope to see Oprah's book club assist in promoting sustainable reading in the same way it helped with a great success to promote reading.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!

Eco-Libris is featured on TreeHugger's 2007 Gift Guide

TreeHugger published yesterday its 2007 Gift Guide for the upcoming holidays.

The guide is full with great ideas for gifts to many different types of people - from the outdoors lover to the person who has everything. Each type is also devided to three shades of green (light, medium and dark) to make it easier to fit the right green gift to for everyone on your gift list.

One of the great ideas on the guide is.. Eco-Libris. Yep, we're proud to be featured in TreeHugger's guide. We are offered as one of the (medium) green gift options for the geeks and more specifically for the book geeks.

Here is the recommendation:

Ecolibris (book geek)
For the book geek on your list, Eco-Libris helps readers to put something back for all their bookworm pleasures. They figure that 20 million trees meet their demise for each year of US book sales; to get those trees growing they've teamed with three conservation groups to keep the world's forests going strong. TH Link Product Link

I can definitely agree that we will be a perfect fit for the book geeks on your list, or any other eco-conscious reader (not only geeks..) you have there that loves books and also wants to help the environment.

We hope to see many people go green this holiday season with Eco-Libris. We're soon going to offer more options for the holidays, such as gift certificates and sending our stickers with a beautiful greeting cards made of recycled paper as a unique and affordable green gift.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!

And the winner of the People's Choice Award is:

I hope you all remember Co-op America's 2007 People's Choice Award for the Green Business of the Year.

We ran here an unofficial guide to the award, where we presented all the final 10 nominees. Last Saturday, the winner was announced in the San Francisco Green Festival:

ReusableBags.com

Congratulations to ReusableBage.com. It's a great green business and it definitely deserves the award.

Co-Op America reported in its newsletter on the winner's response to the exciting news:

"Our ongoing mission since day one has been to change the status quo of society's use-and-toss mentality by providing sound, practical ideas and products," says Vincent Cobb, founder of ReusableBags.com. "We were thrilled to be nominated the past two years, and are incredibly honored to win this year's award."

San Francisco is clearly the place to give the award to ReusableBags.com, as it is the first (and for the best of my knowledge the only) city in the US where plastic bags are banned. I hope many cities and states will follow SF's leadership and will act to finish the destructive addiction to plastic bags. ReusableBags.com is the place to see the alternatives to plastic bags and to learn how easy it can be to go green when it comes to our shopping bags.

For those of you who didn't have the chance to read the on ReusableBags.com in our guide, you can find it here.

Yours,
Raz

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!

Forest Green Poem

We always like to hear from our readers, and therefore I was very happy when I received this week an email from our reader Joe Martino, with a poem in it.

Martino, an inventor and a poet, describes his poem as a real reverence for nature and ecology. I liked his poem very much and I would like to share it with you all:

Forest Green

"I choose to track though a thick carpet of forest green,
where natures beauty remains pristine.
Along paths that has never before bared a human print.

Where sacred ground remains unspoiled... and
fallen leaves remain unsoiled.

I worship the wilderness and natures laws,....
anything unnatural i abhor,...
it tears my heart to the very core.

I yearn to venture deep within the forest green,...
where no human life exists in between and wildlife
is seldom seen.
I prefer the hermits life,...away from all the
needless strife.
And, if and when, i fulfil my noble goals,...and
my final chapter then unfolds,....
i'll share my tale with all my heart and soul,.... to the
very young and the very old....
and until my story is fully told."

COPYRIGHT 2003 JOSEPH P.MARTINO

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!

30 Rock goes greenzo

Last week was NBC Universal's "green week", with a seven days of green-themed programming "aimed at entertaining, informing and empowering Americans to lead greener lives."

I didn't catch much of it, but I was happy to see that one of my favorite shows '30 Rock' of the great Tina Fey (or should I say Ms. Lemon) went green, or more accurately went greenzo. Check it out yourself - the whole episode (as well as all the episodes this year) are available on NBC website.

And thanks to Ecorazzi I learned that on YouTube (where else if not there) you can find a scene from the episode, where a surprising guest is showing up:

http://www.jwharrison.com/uploads/11_09.wmv

More on the green week can be found on Joel Makover's blog 'Two Steps Forward', where he covers all the interesting angles of this green week.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!

The Tiny Seed - Holiday green gift guide for book lovers: Part 4

Welcome to part 4 of Eco-Libris blog's holiday green gift guide, the guide that will help you find the best green books to give as gifts this holiday season.

Today our focus is on children's books, and I am very happy to bring you the recommendation of one of the most knowledgeable persons I know about green kids - Stefani Newman.

To those of you who don't know her, Stefani Newman is a recent transplant from New York to Florida to Panama City, Panama. If getting used to a new country isn't enough, Stefani decided to jump into the blogging world with her informative blog, teensygreen.

teensygreen focuses on helping families make more eco-friendly decisions by highlighting innovative green products, and covering news that brings a little green to every family. When she's not writing she can usually be found at the park, pool, or counting the many ships waiting to get into the Panama Canal!

Stefani's recommendation for this holiday's gift is:

The Tiny Seed

Author: Eric Carle

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Originally published in: 1991

What it is about + Why it's a great gift: Since teensygreen is all about green kids, and I have two little girls of my own, I thought a great kid's book would only be appropriate!

Eric Carle is a true champion of animals and nature through his books, and "The Tiny Seed" takes readers on a beautiful journey through the life cycle of a seed. Kids love to find the smallest seed on every page as it travels many miles through the seasons, overcoming tough obstacles (like hungry birds and big feet!), and finally grows into a stunning, giant flower - only to start the cycle over again.

This book works on so many levels - it not only teaches kids about seasons and the life of a seed, but it subtly helps children learn respect for nature, such as why we not only need to plant more flowers and trees, but why we also need to leave what's already there alone. Young children love the colorful collage images, while older kids can get to know the subject through Carle's gentle words.

This book, and pretty much all of Eric Carle's books, are great gifts for kids of any age. The vibrant pictures and fun subjects really bring nature to life, and kids learn about the subject at hand through their imagination.

"The Tiny Seed" is also a great conversation starter about nature, the seasons, and helps kids open their eyes to the world outside. I was pleasantly surprised when my older daughter wouldn't pick any flowers at the playground because, as she put it, "they need a chance to grow, too"! I would recommend any Eric Carle book for the holidays, but "The Tiny Seed" is an absolute favorite!

Thank you Stefani for a great recommendation!

If you choose to give your friends or family this book as a gift on the holidays, you are more than welcome to balance it out with Eco-Libris, add its sticker to the book and make it the perfect green gift for the holidays.

And just a reminder on past recommendations on our series:
Part 1 - The Man who Planted Trees by Jean Giono
Part 2 - Home Work : Handbuilt Shelter by Lloyd Kahn
Part 3 - The Joy of Vegan Baking by Colleen Patrick-Goudreau

The whole guide can be found here - http://www.ecolibris.net/holiday_guide.asp.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: a great green gift for the holidays!