How the Dodd-Frank Bill will make sure there are no conflict minerals in Apple's iPad?

That's a question I'm asking myself since the Dodd-Frank Bill Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act was signed into law last July, as it included a provision that was specifically addressing conflict minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo, which might be used in the manufacturing process of the iPad (as well as other e-readers and tablet computers).

The bill, as Laura Heaton explained last July on Change.org, "includes a provision requiring U.S. companies that import products containing certain minerals to file an annual report declaring whether they source their minerals from Congo or one of the nine surrounding countries, since much of Congo’s mineral wealth is smuggled out of the region through its neighbors. If a company declares that its supply chain passes through the region, it will have to report what steps it is taking to trace the origin of the minerals and ensure that its purchases don’t fund armed groups responsible for atrocities in eastern Congo."

I'm still trying to figure out how companies like Apple address the new provision so I was happy to learn that IHS and GreenBiz Group will have a free webcast that about this issue on Janurary 20. Spekaers include Rory King, Director, Global Product Marketing, IHS , Andrew K. Reese, Editor, Supply & Demand Chain Executive, Scott Wilson, Content Solution Strategist, IHS, and it will be moderated by John Davies, VP, Senior Analyst, GreenBiz Group .

Here are some more details on the webcast from its webpage:

Almost overnight, deeply entrenched high tech industry experts and the general public alike, were startled by the inclusion of "conflict minerals" being signed into law within the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. The six-page legislative provisions signed on July 21, 2010 will have a direct impact on the supply chain, especially consumer electronics companies square in its cross-hairs. Gold, tin, tantalum and tungsten are among materials subject to regulatory requirements that seek to limit or eliminate materials that support parties linked with human rights abuses and funding armed groups in or near the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).

The most immediately affected are publicly traded companies, most notably in the high tech sector, who are subject to pending SEC reporting requirements. However, the question remains: Will a conflict minerals movement sink enough teeth into the supply chain to fundamentally change price, availability and supplier selection for these metals and subsequently blind-side adjacent supply chains and all regions around the globe? Find out.

Join IHS and GreenBiz Group on this live webcast as they unveil the results of an exclusive survey that gauged awareness, sentiment, concern, and preparedness of the supply chain in response to conflict minerals traceability and accountability. They will share findings from the study and share practitioner insight as to such questions as:

• What is this Conflict Minerals law and what are the conflict metals?
• Where are these materials used throughout the supply chain?
• How prepared are companies and their suppliers to trace this information today?
• What are the most current global conflict mineral concerns?
• What are the current best practices in environmental compliance?

You can sign for it here.

You can learn more on conflict minerals on this video:



Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting Sustainable Reading!

Green news from the pulp and paper industry in North America

I read two interesting stories this week with a promise for a better future for the forests and the paper industry in North America.

The first story is not all that new, but I read about it only this week, so it was new to me :) It is about Georgia-Pacific (GP), one of the largest wood and paper products companies operating in the Southern United States, which announced that "it will no longer purchase trees from endangered forests and special areas, or from new pine plantations established at the expense of natural hardwood forests."

NRDC, which worked with GP to develop this new policy (together with other environmental groups - Dogwood Alliance and Rainforest Action Network) explained in a press release from last November that "While GP’s new forest policy applies to all of its operations, as a first step in implementing its commitment on Endangered Forests and Special Areas, GP worked with the environmental groups and scientists to identify 11 Endangered Forests and Special Areas totaling 600,000 acres in the Mid-Atlantic Coastal Eco-Region, as well as 90 million acres of natural hardwood forests in the Southern region. Endangered Forests and Special Areas in other regions will be mapped in a similar process, over the coming years."

The South’s natural forests are home to more plant and animal species than anywhere else in North America, yet less than two percent of the region's forests are protected, and the South produces more wood and paper than any other place in the world.

This is an important step - “No other U.S. company has demonstrated this level of initiative in mapping unique forests across such a broad region,” said Debbie Hammel, NRDC Senior Resource Specialist in the NRDC's press release. And as Zacary Shahan of Planetsave that wrote on this story this week said "hopefully, the NRDC, RAN, and Dogwood Alliance can get other companies to follow suit soon."

The second story is definitely new - AFP reported yesterday that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced a 278-million-dollar (279-million US) investment to help Canada's pulp and paper industry become more environmentally friendly.

"Speaking in Windsor, Quebec, Harper said Ottawa would namely allocate nearly 25 million dollars to paper manufacturer Domtar Corporation to help its pulp and paper mill "invest in energy-efficient and environment-friendly technologies."

The 24.8-million-dollar (24.9-million US) investment is part of the government's much touted Pulp and Paper Green Transformation Program, which seeks to help mills in Canada reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and produce renewable energy from forest biomass. The rest of the investment would go to plants in New Brunswick, Alberta and British Columbia."

Harper is not considered very green and is blamed for refusing to make combating climate change a priority, so it will be interesting to see if he will prioritize the efforts to green up the pulp and paper industry in Canada. He himself said about the new investment in the industry that "I'm well aware of the criticisms. But what we need are concrete measures in order to really meet those targets. And this government has been the first one to take concrete measures such as the one being announced today."

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Where readers buy their ebooks? Week 5 of our 10-week survey: eBooks.com is on the rise!

We're halfway on our 10-week ebook experiment. Like all experiments, it began with a question: Where will readers look to buy their ebooks? Following the launch of Google eBookstore, its relationships with independent bookstores and with Amazon, B&N, Borders and other book retailers fighting on their market share, the competition between ebook retailers is getting fierce.

Our assumption is that many readers will look for e-books using a search engine and will buy from one of the first results of their search. So we randomly chose 10 books of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2010 and googled each title with the word ebook and wrote down the first two results we got. We redo it every Thursday for 10 weeks and will see if there are any changes in the search results.

Here are the results for week 5. In brackets you'll see the first week results. If they were the same we just wrote 'same'. And if you click on the titles, you will be forwarded to the first place on the title's search):

1. Girl by the Road at Night by David Rabe
1st place: Simon & Schuster (same)
2nd place: Simon & Schuster (same)

2. The Long Song by Andrea Levy
1st place: Amazon.com (same)
2nd place: Amazon.com (same)

3. The New Yorker Stories by Ann Beattie
1st place: Amazon.com (same)
2nd place: Amazon.com (same)

4. A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
1st place: Amazon.com (same)
2nd place: Random House (Simon & Schuster)

5. Big Girls Don't Cry by Rebecca Traister
1st place: Simon & Schuster (same)
2nd place: Simon & Schuster (same)

6. The Price of Altruism by Oren Harman
1st place: Kobo (Amazon.com)
2nd place: Amazon.com (same)

7. INSECTOPEDIA by Hugh Raffles
1st place: Amazon.com (same)
2nd place: eBooks.com (same)

8. Country Driving by Peter Hessler
1st place: Barnes & Noble (same)
2nd place:Amazon.com (goodreads)

9. The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson
1st place: eBooks.com (B&N)
2nd place: Barnes & Noble (Random House)

10. Hitch 22 by Christopher Hitchens
1st place: Amazon.com (same)
2nd place: Barnes & Noble (same)

Here's the summary of the results:

	Amazon		B&N		Publishers		Others		Google
	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd	1st	2nd
week 1	6	3	1	2	3	4	0	1	0	0
week2	6	4	1	3	3	3	0	0	0	0
week3	6	2	1	2	3	4	0	2	0	0
week4	6	3	2	1	2	4	0	2	0	0
week5	5	4	1	2	2	3	2	1	0	0

We give 2 points for 1st place and 1 point for 2nd place:

		Amazon		B&N		Google		Publishers		Others
week 1		15		4		0		10		1
week 2		16		5		0		9		0
week 3		14		4		0		10		2
week 4		15		5		0		8		2
week 5		14		4		0		7		5

So what do have here? Amazon lost one point, but is still in the first place with no real competition in site. B&N didn't change much and the publishers' websites continue to lose power (30% decrease since we started the experience). The main change we see this week is a rise in 'others' with the first time that websites like eBooks.com or Kobo win a first place (eBooks.com also had another second place). It will be interesting to see if this trend will continue in the next weeks. See you next Thursday.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Kindle Killer? Probably not, but will the iPad become a Kindle Cannibalizer?

OK, we got it. The iPad is not a Kindle killer. At least that's what we hear in the last couple of days following a recent survey of about 1,000 consumers by JP Morgan’s Internet team. Among other things this survey found that 40% of iPad owners also own a Kindle and that 23% of iPad users said that they plan to buy a Kindle in the next year.

So, no killing, but how about cannibalizing? How much can the iPad (and other tablets) squeeze the e-reader market, making the Kindle the preferred device only for the niche of avid and semi-avid readers?

Let's look first at the JP Morgan's survey. Erick Schonfeld summed it up on TechCrunch (click on the picture to see it in full size)

These are very interesting results. Like many others I also thought that the the iPad will have a greater negative influence on the Kindle and other e-readers sales.

But even though it's clear now that Amazon did a very good job in differentiating the Kindle from the iPad, as well as in marketing it, there is still one BIG question that is still unanswered:

How significantly the iPad (and other tablets) would cannibalize the e-reader market?

Yes, we know that the Amazon did well in 2010 (they won't say of course how many Kindle devices they sold but a recent report from Bloomberg estimated that Amazon was likely to sell 8 million Kindles in 2010), but how well will it do in 2011 and 2012 with dozens of new tablets coming and when the with estimates that U.S. sales of tablet computers will more than double in 2011 to 24.1 million?

I wonder how many of the 40% iPad owners that also own a Kindle bought first the Kindle and then the iPad? I would guess that probably 80-90 percent of them. So what we can learn from it? One possibility that is not mentioned on the JP Morgan's survey is that consumers bought a Kindle because that what was available in the market back then, but they want something that is more than just an e-reader and that's why they bought the iPad when it became available in 2010.

So one possible conclusion can be that the Kindle is not good enough for many consumers, who don't read much, and want to have other features such as internet browsing, e-mail, watching video, and playing games. Now when there will be so many new tablets available, it is definitely possible that this sort of logic will get consumers to buy the iPad 2 or any other tablet instead of the Kindle. The result: The Kindle sales will decline or at least won't grow as much.

True, 23% of the iPad users say they plan to buy a Kindle in the next year, but how many of them will actually do so? I guess this is the variable that will actually determine to what degree the iPad will cannibalize the Kindle sales. If 23% or even 15%-20% of tablet owners will also purchase the Kindle (or Nook or Kobo), then the Kindle will do just fine. But if the percentage would be significantly lower, then Amazon will dominate mainly a relatively small market niche that includes just avid and semi-avid readers that would care about the advantages the Kindle has over the iPad when it comes to e-reading.

Bottom line: Projections for the Kindle sales on 2011 expect less Kindle devices to be sold this year compared to last year (4-5 million in 2011 compared to 8 million in 2010), but we'll need to be patient and wait to the end of 2011 to see the real influence the iPad and other tablets have on the e-reader market in general and the Kindle sales specifically. Then we'll know if the iPad is really cannibalizing the Kindle or they can both co-exist and grow their sales happily ever after.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

How can Barnes & Noble avoid bankruptcy? 5 Lessons from the unfortunate case of Borders

It looks like Borders' bankruptcy is becoming inevitable. As the AP reported last Thursday, "Borders Group Inc. has delayed payments to some of its vendors as the nation's second-largest bookseller seeks to preserve cash while it struggles to refinance its debt."

With decreasing sales (17.6% down in the last quarter compared with the third quarter of 2009), growing operating loss ( $74.4 million for the quarter ended Oct. 30.), shrinking cash reserves and assets, growing difficulties to refinance its debt, a stock that is diving below $1, and maybe above all, lack of strategy on how to get back on the track, it's really hard to imagine how Borders can avoid bankruptcy.

I wonder what the executives at Barnes & Noble think about it. I am quite sure they don't celebrate even though Borders is a significant competitor, but I wonder if they see it as a warning sign. Because I believe that even if B&N looks a little bit better shape than Borders, they're also in a very bad position and are next in line for bankruptcy. I still think that unlike Borders they have a chance to avoid it, but that will only happen if they'll learn the right lessons from the case of Borders:

1. You need a strategy - Borders thought it can make it using some patches like using Google’s Local Availability tool and Meetup Everywhere to "create a more interactive shopping experience" and closing some stores. These are nice steps but they're definitely no substitute to a clear and comprehensive strategy that will enable Borders to win the wars of the changing book market. B&N, to remind you, doesn't have such a strategy as well.

2. You need to worry for both your brick and mortar and your online operations - Borders, as Matthew Lynley of VentureBeat mentioned last week focused mainly on its brick and mortar stores: "despite losing out on sales of books and other products, Borders is essentially looking to pull a GameStop and stay focused on their brick and mortar stores. Borders acknowledged eBooks and eReaders as a definitive threat to their business, but expects its in-store sales to remain intact, according to its most recent 10-Q filing."

Both the brick and mortar stores and the online store are battleground and not making an effort to make both channels successful is a mistake. B&N suffers from a similar problem, only it looks like it is the opposite one - they put a lot of effort on improving their online activity and very little effort on their brick and mortar stores. This is OK if they want to ditch the stores and leave just BN.com as their main activity. But if they want to maintain both channels (which makes more sense), then they need to put more effort in both of them, not to mention improving the synergy between the two.

3. It's time to think out of the box - Borders didn't think out of the box and failed to find ways to bring book buyers to its stores and gain profitability. Frankly, I don't think there are any solutions there. If B&N want to avoid Borders' fate they should start thinking outside the box (and not, selling toys at their stores is not an example for such thinking), or even better, think like there is no box at all (here's our 2 cents on what can work for them).

4. The NOOK alone can't save you - Even though Borders might be sorry now that they don't sell their own e-reader like B&N, I think the lesson from the Borders' case is actually that the problems of the big chains are so profound that no single product, no matter how successful it is (The Nook linkeup has just become Barnes & Noble's best-selling product of all-time), can solve it.

Let's be clear: No matter how successful the Nook is (and relatively it has only about 4% market share), it still doesn't generate any incentive whatsoever for customers to go to B&N stores and buy there books, and the stores represent more than 90% of its sales. Eventually, even with the Nook, there is no substitute for strategy.

5. There is no time - Maybe B&N think they still have time, especially now after they had successful holidays sales, or at least that they don't have to do much until they will sell the company, and then it's going to be the buyers' problem. Well, they are wrong. As we can learn from the Borders' case, the tipping point of financial distress can be closer than it looks and when one block falls, the others tend to fall very quickly afterwards. Every day that goes by without taking serious steps is increasing the chance for bankruptcy, with our without a new buyer.

The case of Borders is definitely unfortunate, but B&N can still avoid taking the same path. I'm not sure if these lessons alone will save B&N, but I'm certain that if B&N will avoid them, they are significantly increasing the chances that they will follow Borders.

What do you think? We'll be happy to hear your thoughts!

More related articles:

Borders is closing stores, adding Google tools and teaming with MeetUp - Is this a winning strategy? Probably not..

Barnes & Noble is expecting to generate $3-$5 billion from e-books sales in 2013 - is it realistic?

Is there a future for Barnes & Noble and Borders bookstores? Is it a green one?

Can monetary incentives + local benefits generate a brighter future for independent bookstores?,

You can find more resources on the future of bookstores on our website at www.ecolibris.net/bookstores_future.asp

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Annual assessments of Eco-Libris' planting partners are available now online

photo from the Eco-Libris' planting areas in Panama, courtesy of SHI: Nursery of 2,000 trees including mahogany,cedro espino (Bombacopsis quinata), cedro amargo (Simarouba amara) and chime tree

This is our last post for 2010 and just like we did in 2008 and 2009, we dedicate it to announce that the annual assessments (2009-10) of our planting partners are now available online!

Here's a little bit more about these assessments: As part of our pledge to quality service to our customers, we decided at the beginning of our operations to conduct annual assessments of our planting partners.The two main goals of these assessments are: 1. to verify the quality of the planting operations and to make sure the high standards we promise to our customers are kept and 2. to provide our customers with details on the tree planting operations they support to balance out their books.

As always, the trees planted by our planting partners provide multiple significant benefits to both the local communities in the areas where they are planted and to the environment. This year we had an example of it in Guatemala in the tragic circumstances of the tropical storm Agatha that took place in May 2010, causing horrific flooding and mudslides (see photo below, credit: Ann Hallum) that killed at least 145 people, washed away crops and highways, and hundreds of homes. Particularly hard hit was the Department of Chimaltenango where AIR works. Dr. Ann Hallum, the Director of AIR, reports about the difference AIR's trees made then on AIR's assessment:

During the summer of flooding, 2010, I witnessed most dramatically the power of trees (especially pine trees, with their deep tap roots). Over and over again, we saw that where there were no trees, the mudslides occurred, and in areas right next to a slide with trees, the mountainside held together. More than once, we saw a young forest planted by AIR stop the mudslides that would have destroyed small houses below, and a stream. As the AIR technician said, “the trees stood against the mud like little soldiers.” We are planting more urgently than ever!

AIR tree nursery; Santa Apolonia; Rebecca Hallum, Anne Hallum, with Luis Iquique and the resident committee, June 2010 (photo: Ann Hallum)

This is the third year we're conducting these assessments. You are invited to read them (see links below) and also visit our planting partners' websites to learn more about them. Links to both the first year's and second year's assessments for each of our planting partners, as well as links to their websites, are available on our planting partners page.

Another example is Malawi, Africa where our partner RIPPLE Africa is working. Their video below shows the effects of deforestation and bush burning in Malawi and also illustrates the woodland conservation program that RIPPLE Africa has initiated there.

This video shows both sides of reality in Malawi - deforestation and frustration on one side and reforestation and hope on the other side, which we're proud to support.



Another video we would like to recommend is Planting Hope - The Story of Sustainable Harvest International (Video generously filmed & produced by Myriad Media) that provides a closer look at the great work our partner SHI is doing in Central America, including the planting of over 2.7 million trees in countries such Belize, Panama, Nicaragua and Honduras since 1997.




Here are links to the three reports:

AIR's assessment

RIPPLE Africa's assessment

SHI's assessment

We will keep you posted of course with more data, photos and videos from the planting operations! Thanks again to our planting partners and to everyone that was involved in the work on the assessments.

Happy New Year!
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

Happy New Year from Eco-Libris!