Green Mooching! Eco-Libris is partnering with BookMooch

I wrote almost 3 months ago about BookMooch, an online community for book swapping. Back then I was very excited to learn about it from an article I read on the NYT. Now, I’m even more excited to announce a new partnership between Eco-Libris and BookMooch!

BookMooch is a very cool book-swapping community, created by John Buckman 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. 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.

Now BookMooch and Eco-Libris are partnering to offer the BookMooch community (with its more than 500,000 members from all over the world) a special green option to earn points.

Starting today, BookMooch members can earn points by planting trees with Eco-Libris. All you need to do is to choose the number of books you want to balance out by planting trees. For every 10 books balanced 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 I wrote earlier, 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 the same idea 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.

We also got into it - Eylon Israely of Eco-Libris is a BookMooch member for a couple of months and has already sent about 30 books so far. And of course each book you will mooch from him is also balanced out with our sticker on it!

So check out BookMooch blog for more details and start mooching books and gaining points with us. You will be able to receive great books from fellow members with these points and will benefit the environment at the same time. Is there anything better than that?

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris

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

Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See

If you're still looking for a good reason to take action and go green, sit down and watch this interesting video from YouTube (seen until now by 3,129,655 viewers), with the scary name 'Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See' (no worries, there are no difficult images, only talking..):



From Treehugger.com I learned that this guy is a high school science teacher named Greg Craven, set up in his home with a whiteboard and a felt-tipped marker. If you want to see more of his videos (and I understand this video is part of a series with over 40 videos in it), please check Greg's YouTube account.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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

Eco-Libris on the podcast 'The Book of Life'

The book of life is a great podcast site about "jewish people and the books we read".

It is run by Heidi Estrin, who hosts The Book of Life podcast and also directs the library at Congregation B'nai Israel in Boca Raton, Florida.

Heidi published today a podcast named 'Empowerment for the New Year' that offers themes of empowerment, including an interview with me on Eco-Libris, sustainable reading and how eco-conscious readers can go green.

It was a pleasure to talk on this podcast that is also in the sign of the upcoming Tu Bishvat, the Israeli holiday celebrating the New Year of the Trees.

You can listen to the podcast here.

Yours,

Raz @ Eco-Libris

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

The Native Forest Law is being approved in Chile after 15 years of negotiations

It took them 15 years, but it was worth waiting - the Chilean parliament has approved a law to preserve the country's forests, promote their sustainable use and foster related scientific research.
SciDev.net reported (and thank you to Metafore for bringing it to my attention) about this happy ending for 15 years of negotiations, the longest any law has taken to pass in Chile.

Antonio Lara, dean of the forestry science faculty at the Austral University in Valdivia, Chile, who was involved in the negotiations since 1992, explained the essence of the new law, called 'The Native Forest Law': "This law introduces an ecosystemic vision that does not consider the forest just as a wood source, but as a benefit for the community, since it sets funds for forest recovery and for its non-lumber management."

Two important parts in the new law are the creation of a fund of US $8 million a year for forest conservation, recovery and sustainable management projects, and the protection of water sources by banning the felling of native forests located near springs, rivers, glaciers, wetlands, and lands with steep slopes.

This is great news from Chile and I hope that many other developing countries (and also developed countries) will follow Chile and adopt its vision. I just hope it just won't take them 15 years :-)

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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

Do the green thing and take the stairs in January

We turned the lights off early and had some fun in the dark in November. We bought an old thing in December. And now we're taking the steps.

Yes, our friends at Do The Green Thing keep making our green life more interesting by giving us challenging green missions. This month they ask us to be heroes and take the stairs.

Here's their explanation to what's the logic behind it:

Labour-saving machines save us labour, that’s the point. They transport us from the ground floor to the fifth floor. They take us from A to B. They wash and dry and cook and clean for us.
But these machines use energy which produces CO2. It would help if we could use them less or use them more efficiently.

Take lifts. Or rather don’t. If you work on the 25th floor of a skyscraper, fair enough. But lifts are like vertical taxis - you wouldn’t hail a cab to go 100 feet down the road so why summon one to take you a few floors up?

So use less machine power and more of your own steam power. And if you take the stairs or find a way to resist other labour-saving machines, please come back and click DONE IT so we can count how much CO2 we’ve all saved.

Check out their website for more information. They have great videos, audios and it all comes with a great sense of humor, a you can see from the following video:




Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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

Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies

I learned yesterday from the New York Times on a new book in the Dummies series, and this time a green one: Green Building & Remodeling for Dummies by Eric Corey Freed.

The book, according to its website, is "your friendly, step-by-step guide to every facet of this Earth-friendly method of construction."

Eric Corey Freed, is an architect from San Francisco, CA, the founder of and principal architect at organicARCHITECT, a firm at the heart of the environmental movement that designs environmentally-friendly homes throughout the U.S.

The Founding Chair of Architecture for The San Francisco Design Museum, he teaches at the Academy of Art University and UC-Berkeley, sits on the Environmental Committee of The Commonwealth Club of California, and writes a syndicated monthly column for GreenerBuildings.com.

The book provides an introduction to every facet of green building, from start to finish, including the materials, architecture, and construction methods of green building and remodeling for both homeowners and professionals such as architects, interior designers, and contractors.

The chapters are organized in five parts: The Need for Green, Paying Attention to Material Matters, Green Building Methods, Green building Systems and Site Planning, and The Part of Tens (top ten checklists).

I like the Dummies series and therefore I was happy to hear about this one. I agree what I read on Sustainable Design Update - this book is certainly another sign that green building goes mainstream.

Green Building & Remodeling For Dummies may not be the only book you need to read if you want to build a green house or remodel your apartment and make it more efficient and eco-friendly, but it's definitely a good place to start at. Mr. Freed according to the NYT cut out the technical complexities, so it should also be a good book to anyone who just want to get to know better what green building is all about.

You're welcome to search inside the book at Amazon.com and learn about it a little more.

More reviews of green books can be found on our green resources page.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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

Prince Charles wants to team up with Norway to save forests

Reuters reported last week on a very interesting collaboration between Prince Charles and Norway. The goal: preventing deforestation in developing countries.

The article reports that Prince Charles, who is known as the Green Prince due to its extensive support of many green issues, offered to Norwegian Prime Minister, Jens Stoltenberg to work together on saving forests in developing countries. The offer came after Norway's announcement earlier in December that it aimed to provide about 3 billion crowns ($541.2 million) per year to prevent deforestation in developing countries.

Both Prince Charles and the Norwegian government see prevention of deforestation as an effective . Prince Charles said in the past that "the world's rainforests is key to combating global warming" and Norway has said that "fighting deforestation is a quick and low-cost way to achieve cuts in greenhouse gas emissions blamed by scientists for global warming, in addition to maintaining biodiversity and securing people's livelihoods".

Prince Charles is very involved with efforts to save forests lately. Last October he launched a new organization called Reforestation Project that calls for a new green economics that recognises the world's rainforests are worth more alive than dead.

The Gurdian reported that "The Prince's Rainforests Project will bring together environmentalists, scientists and leaders from the developing world in an effort to halt mass deforestation - a bigger contributor to global warming than the world's entire transport sector, including aviation."

Norway want to see the fight in deforestation in developing countries becoming a global concern and not only a local initiative - it has said that commitments to reduce emissions from deforestation in developing nations should be included in a global climate change regime from 2012 and that it will work to develop funding and certification systems to promote the effort.

This is great news for everyone, and I hope the Norwegians and Prince Charles will succeed in their mission to prevent as much deforestation as possible. And let's not forget that some of these trees are cut down for paper, so less virgin paper used for printing books can definitely help to make Prince Charles and the Norwegians' job easier.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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