Moon Willow Press's Summer Reading Program offers free ebooks every week!

Moon Willow Press, a small publishing company committed to helping sustain forests while celebrating the written word, which partners with Eco-Libris to plant trees for its published books, is running this summer a great Summer Reading Program.

This program, which will run until September 8, 2012 is designed to promote reading and tree-planting. All summer, every weekend, Moon Willow Press will be offering free e-books! Check back weekly.

Here are more details on the Summer Reading Program:

Free Kindle downloads every weekend: Smoke Ghosts and Other Outré Tales is our seventh freebie during our summer reading promotion and is free July 14-15 from Amazon Kindle. Click here for the full schedule of free downloads this summer.

Contest to win a *$50.00 Amazon gift card: When you buy any paperback title from Moon Willow Press between June 1 – September 8, you will automatically be entered into our Summer Reading Contest to win a $50.00 gift certificate to Amazon.com. The contest is open to all ages. How does it work?

*Amazon.ca – $50.00 (CAD) for Canadian residents or Amazon.com – $50.00 (USD) for all other countries

1. When you buy a paperback book from MWP between June 1 – September 8, Moon Willow Press will enter your name and contact details into a summer reading database.
2. For each Moon Willow Press paperback title you purchase, you will be entered into the contest drawing. The more reading of our books that you do, the better chance you have to win! (You can only win once!)
3. On September 8, Moon Willow Press will draw ten names from a random generator and contact the buyers.
4. Of those ten, we will ask for a statement not to exceed 500 words relating what books you read over the summer and how reading has changed your life. These statements must be emailed to us by the official end of summer: September 21, 2012, midnight Pacific time.
5. Moon Willow Press’s Mary, and others, will judge the ten responses. We will be judging responses by a combination of how many books you’ve read over the summer (please be honest and list each one!), grammatical accuracy, interesting thought process (can be humorous, motivational, etc.), and timeliness of your response. Responses received after midnight PDT will be discarded, and those entrants will be ineligible to win.
6. All final 10 entries will win a free Moon Willow Press annual membership.
7. The winner and response will be announced September 24th, and the gift card will be emailed to the winner on September 25.

Reduced Prices: All 2011 paperbacks have been reduced in price. Click our Book Catalog for more information.

Tree-planting initiative: A portion of all sales during this time will be donated to Eco-Libris: Plant a tree for each book you read.

For more information on Moon Willow Press visit their website at http://www.moonwillowpress.com

Past collaborations with Moon Willow Press:

Infernal Drums by Anthony Wright

Smoke Ghosts & Other Outré Tales, by Anthony Wright

The Little Big Town by Mary Woodbury

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: promoting sustainable reading!

House Improvement Ideas for A Greener Life At Home

This is a guest column by Aileen Pablo

As homes become older and people are opting to make improvements rather than move to new locations, more families are wondering what they can do to not only save themselves money but also create a more eco-friendly environment. After all, older homes were built without the innovative materials found in newer homes today making them more of an energy drain than most homeowners would care to admit.

If you are looking for ways to update your older home into a greener way to live, here are a few projects you can do in your house.

• Add insulation – This is the easiest way to keep moderate temperatures in and extreme elements out. With recent updates to insulation technology older homes are less equipped to help homeowners do this. Adding insulation can cut your energy costs year round by as much as 10%. And not only is this savings significant but so is the savings to the environment is energy it takes to heat or cool your home.

• Plant a tree – This is a great way to quickly upgrade the look of your home, add more carbon dioxide eating plants and create shade to help keep the sun from beating down on your house causing it to heat up faster. With so many benefits it is one of the easiest ways to make a quick and extremely green switch to improve your home.

• Go solar without the panels – Just as you want to cool your house naturally on hot days, you will also want to use the power of the sun to help heat your home on cold days. If you have windows that are exposed to the sun, direct the warming rays into your home by opening up your blinds and letting them in. Darkening your house only keeps the cool temperatures inside but exposing it to some natural solar heating helps you to naturally add some warmth without using excessive gas with your heating system.

• Save Water – Saving electricity is not the only way to make your home go green. You can also make quick and easy updates to your appliances to save water. This is especially true with older appliances such as toilets and showerheads. In fact, low flow toilets can save an average of 4,000 gallons each year and low flow showerheads can reduce your usage by as much as 50%. Update your home with new looks that come with water saving technology and cut your water bill by gallons each month.

• Use sensors on lights – You may feel more comfortable having your lights on in the early evening hours when there is traffic on the street and more people likely to stop by unexpectedly. However, once you are in bed and during the wee hours of the morning, save electricity and set your lights to turn off automatically. This way, you can cut costs without having to rely on your memory to turn off the lights each night before bed.

• Weather strip old windows and door jams – As much as 30% of your heating and cooling can slip out of your home and let in the extreme temperatures you are trying to keep out without the proper weather stripping. Visit your local home improvement store to find the right solution for your home and start insulating your door jams and windows easily and more efficiently to reduce costs immediately.

• Use zone heating methods intelligently – Many people think by having a wood burning fire they are adding to the warmth of their home. However, these fireplaces tend to suck more heat out of the home by allowing it to get sucked up the chimney then they add. Instead, use covered fireplaces to allow the heat to ventilate out of the fireplace and avoid it from being sucked up through the chimney.

• Replace your appliances with high efficiency solutions – New technology has given homeowners a way to go green and protect the environment through high efficiency appliances. Even more money saving and encouraging to make this switch are the utility companies that provide their customers with additional rebates just for making the switch. Contact your utility providers to see if this is something they will do for you.

Homeowners can save significant money each year by making these small home improvement updates and turn their home from an environmental drain to an eco-friendly living solution.

[Image credit: nikcame, Flickr Creative Commons]

Author Bio:

Aileen Pablo is part of the team behind Open Colleges, one of Australia’s leading providers of TAFE courses equivalent and interior design courses. When not working, Aileen blogs about travel, lifestyle, home improvement, and beauty tips. She is also often invited as a speaker in Personality Development Seminars in the Philippines.If you have a blog and would like free content. You can find him on Google+.

How green is the new iPad - part 7: break-even point between ebooks and paper books

This is the the final chapter in our our 7-part series, where we're exploring the carbon footprint and environmental impacts of the new iPad, comparing it to those of the iPad 2 and trying to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new break-even point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

On every part of the series we're looking into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad. We already covered production, energy efficiency, packaging, restricted substances, recycling and the total carbon footprint. Today we're looking into the break-even point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

Break-even point between books and ebooks on the iPad:

Here is the information on the break-even point of the new iPad (source: Apple's report)

For this comparison, I'll use the figure of 7.46 kg CO2 to represent the lifecycle carbon emissions of an average book. This is also the figure I used for the comparison made for the first model of the iPad.

This figure was presented on the Cleantech report (The Environmental Impact of Amazon's Kindle) and according to the report based on three independent studies that used life cycle analysis calculators to assess the impact of raw materials (I know it's much higher from the figure of 4.01 kg presented on the 2008 Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry report, but I believe it helps to make the comparison more conservative).

So, given that the carbon footprint of the new iPad is 180kg CO2, then the break-even point is: new iPad = 24.1 paper books.

It means that putting aside all the other uses of the new iPad, then from a carbon footprint point of view, it becomes a more environmental friendly alternative option for book reading once you finished reading your 24th book on your new iPad (or 25th book if you want to be more accurate).

If you make the comparison based on the 4.01 kg CO2 per book (provided by the Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry report), the break-even point is 44.89 books.

This is of course a conservative estimate since the iPad, as a tablet computer, has many other users and actually reading ebooks is not the most popular use of these devices. If you take other uses in consideration, the break-even point may be lower.

Here is the information on the break-even point of the iPad 2 (source: Apple's report - revised version):

Using the figure of 7.46kg CO2 to represent the lifecycle carbon emissions of an average book and given that the carbon footprint of the iPad 2 is 130kg CO2, then the break-even point is: iPad 2 = 17.4 paper books.

It means that putting aside all the other uses of the iPad 2, then from a carbon footprint point of view, it becomes a more environmental friendly alternative option for book reading once you finished reading your 17th book on your new iPad (or 18th book if you want to be more accurate).

If you make the comparison based on the 4.01 kg CO2 per book (provided by the Environmental Trends and Climate Impacts: Findings from the U.S. Book Industry report), the break-even point is 32.4 books.

Our take: The new iPad has a significantly higher break-even point comparing to the iPad 2, representing the differences between their carbon footprints.

Bottom line: Making the argument that reading ebooks is greener has become a bit more difficult with the new iPad as the break-even point has gone up. This is definitely not the direction it should be going with newer versions of the iPad. Better devices should also mean smaller carbon footprints, otherwise this might be a technological progress, but it's definitely not a sustainable one.

Here are the parts of the series that were released so far:

Part 1 - production
Part 2 - energy efficiency
Part 3 - packaging
Part 4 - restricted substances
Part 5 - recycling
Part 6 - carbon footprint

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks 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!

We have a winner on the Skinnydipping giveaway!

Last week we reviewed and recommended on a great new audiobook -
Skinnydipping by Bethenny Frankel, read by January LaVoy. The audiobook is published by Simon & Schuster Audio.

We also had a giveaway of one copy of the audiobook. We asked you to tell us in which reality show you would like to be on and we got some great answers. And we have a winner! Our winner is Lisa, who wrote:

"I'd be on Top Chef, not because I can cook I just want to try everyone else's food."

Congrats, Lisa! You have won a copy of Skinnydipping and we hope you'll enjoy it! Next week we'll continue in our summer series of audiobook recommendations with another great audiobook - Mercury.

Have a great weekend!

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Promoting sustainable reading!

How green is the new iPad - part 6: comparing the carbon footprint of the new iPad and iPad 2

After a short break we're back with our 7-part series in which we explore the carbon footprint and environmental impacts of the new iPad, compare it to those of the iPad 2 and try to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new breakeven point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

On every part of the series we're looking into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad. We already covered production, energy efficiency, packaging, restricted substances and recycling. Today we're looking at the total carbon footprint.

Total carbon footprint:

Here is the information on the total carbon footprint of the new iPad (source: Apple's report):

	Emissions
Production	120.6
Customer use	45
Transport	10.8
Recycling	3.6
Total	180

Here is the information on the total carbon footprint of the iPad 2 (source: Apple's report - revised version):

	Emissions
Production	85.8
Customer use	29.9
Transport	11.7
Recycling	2.6
Total	130

Comparison between the carbon footprint of the new iPad and the iPad 2:

	new iPad	iPad 2	Change
Production	120.6	85.8	40.6%
Customer use	45	29.9	50.5%
Transport	10.8	11.7	-7.7%
Recycling	3.6	2.6	38.5%
Total	180	130	38.5%

Our take: The picture is very clear - the new iPad has a significantly higher carbon footprint comparing to the iPad 2. Other than transportation, where we see some decline in emissions, all the other parts of the life cycle of the iPad have became more carbon intensive.

Bottom line: Apple is doing a poor job when it comes the carbon emissions of the iPad, not ensuring that a newer version will also be a greener one from a carbon footprint standpoint.

Next part on our series: Breakeven point for ebooks vs. books

Here are the parts of the series that were released so far:

Part 1 - production
Part 2 - energy efficiency
Part 3 - packaging
Part 4 - restricted substances
Part 5 - recycling

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks 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!

How green is the New iPad - part 5: Recycling

Last week we started a 7-part series in which we explore the carbon footprint and environmental impacts of the new iPad, compare it to those of the iPad 2 and try to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new breakeven point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

On every part of the series we're looking into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad. We already covered production, energy efficiency, packaging and restricted substances. Today we're looking at recycling.

Recycling:

Here is the information on the recycling of the new iPad (source: Apple's report):

Through ultra-efficient design and the use of highly recyclable materials, Apple has minimized material waste at the product’s end of life. In addition, Apple offers and participates in various product take-back and recycling programs in 95 percent of the regions where Apple products are sold. All products are processed in the country or region in which they are collected. For more information on how to take advantage of these programs, visit www.apple.com/recycling.

Here is the information on the recycling of the iPad 2 (source: Apple's report - revised version):

Through ultra-efficient design and the use of highly recyclable materials, Apple has minimized material waste at the product’s end of life. In addition, Apple offers and participates in various product take-back and recycling programs in 95 percent of the regions where Apple products are sold. All products are processed in the country or region in which they are collected. For more information on how to take advantage of these programs, visit www.apple.com/recycling.

Our take: Basically, Apple copied the text it used for the iPad 2. The only thing is that Apple, as we showed in part 1 - production, is actually using more materials in the new iPad comparing to the iPad 2.

Bottom line: Apple is static when it comes to recycling and the offer stays the same. We'll have to see if it will manage in the future to provide consumers further incentives and to recycle their iPads. To be fair it's also important to mention that Apple products' recycling rate is 70 percent, which is pretty high comparing to its competitors.

Next part on our series: Total carbon footprint

Here are the parts of the series that were released so far:

Part 1 - production
Part 2 - energy efficiency
Part 3 - packaging
Part 4 - restricted substances

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks 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!

How green is the New iPad - part 4: Restricted substances

Last week we started a 7-part series in which we explore the carbon footprint and environmental impacts of the new iPad, compare it to those of the iPad 2 and try to figure out if Apple has made any progress from environmental perspective with its new iPad and what's the new breakeven point between books and ebooks on the iPad.

Every day we're looking into another part of the carbon footprint of the new iPad. We already covered production, energy efficiency and packaging. Today we're looking at restricted substances.

Restricted substances:

Here is the information on the restricted substances of the new iPad (source: Apple's report):

Apple has long taken a leadership role in restricting harmful substances from its products and packaging. As part of this strategy, all Apple products comply with the strict European Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment, also known as the RoHS Directive. Examples of materials restricted by RoHS include lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, and the brominated flame retardants (BFRs) PBB and PBDE. iPad goes even further than the requirements of the RoHS Directive by incorporating the following more aggressive restrictions:

• Mercury-free LED-backlit display
• Arsenic-free display glass
• BFR-free
• Polyvinyl chloride (PVC)−free

Here is the information on the restricted substances of the iPad 2 (source: Apple's report - revised version):

Apple has long taken a leadership role in restricting harmful substances from its products and packaging. As part of this strategy, all Apple products comply with the strict European Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment, also known as the RoHS Directive. Examples of materials restricted by RoHS include lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, and the brominated flame retardants (BFRs) PBB and PBDE. iPad 2 goes even further than the requirements of the RoHS Directive by incorporating the following more aggressive restrictions:

• Mercury-free LED-backlit display
• Arsenic-free display glass
• BFR-free
• Polyvinyl chloride (PVC)−free

Our take: Basically, nothing has changed in the newest version of the iPad when it comes to restricted substances. The text is the same text, which means that no new steps have been taken to improve the new iPad from hazardous substances use standpoint.

Bottom line: Apple is static when it comes to restricted substances. We'll have to see if it gets more innovative about it in the next version or maybe this is as good as it gets.

Next part on our series: Recycling.

Here are the parts of the series that were released so far:

Part 1 - production
Part 2 - energy efficiency
Part 3 - packaging

More resources on how green is the iPad can be found on our website at www.ecolibris.net/ipad.asp

More resources on the ebooks 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!