Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Better Paper Project offers a free webinar on sustainable publishing in the 21st century


Our friends at Better Paper Project will run on July 11, 1:00pm a free webinar on sustainable publishing. It's a 1-hour webinar and free - magazine publishers interested in getting greener are welcome to check it out. Here are some more details on the webinar:

You are invited to join the Green America Better Paper Project for this event, in recognition of your magazine’s efforts at improving paper consumption practices. This webinar will provide participants with information on existing tools and best practices to forward paper procurement policies and provide a snap shot and update on global forest hotspots, including the Great Bear Rainforest, Canada’s Boreal Forest and the rainforests of Indonesia.

Staff from Canopy will also join the Green America Better Paper Project to help answer questions on how to engage your suppliers and mills to promote lasting solutions that provide certainty both in terms of supply of environmental paper for your company, as well as ecological protection of our global forests.

For more details on Better Paper Project visit their website - http://betterpaper.ning.com/. You can register to the webinar at https://cc.readytalk.com/cc/s/showReg?udc=1uz0rjo4wszn

Yours,

Raz @ecolibris

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

Saturday, June 23, 2012

ECO Banners with Bamboo Retractable Stand from Greg Barber, the Eco-Friednly Printer


I'd like to share with you a message from our printer and friend Greg Barber on a new green printing product he's introducing - the Eco Banner:

I am introducing a new line of Eco Banners that include a Bamboo, Retractable Stand. It takes me 20 seconds to assemble these banners at a trade show, and we have a mini carry bag that looks like a kid's golf bag , to easily carry the banner to your next show..


Take a look at our retractable banners, made from Recycled Plastic Soda Bottles.



I will introduce a table top retractable banner, size 8.5 x 12, with a mini, Bamboo Stand in the next few weeks. It will retail for $95 and may replace the need for huge banners. I plan to introduce it at the next Green Festival in D.C in late September.

The large size banner is approx 3 x 7 feet. I will place the banner and the stand near the front of my space at a show. It captures the eye of visitors faster.

For more details please contact Greg Barber, www.ecofriendlyprinter.com, 973-224-1132.


Photo: A beautiful 100% PET Bottle banner Greg made for the Green Breakfast Club - Green Breakfast Club provides a unique resource exchange and networking format to grow local green business communities through sharing resources.


Yours,

Raz Godelnik

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

Monday, June 18, 2012

From our planting partner RIPPLE Africa: Geoff and Force - 24 hour Sponsored Silence!


We wanted to share with you a new effort from our planting partner RIPPLE Africa to raise money and this time it involves an interesting challenge - keeping Geoff and Force from RIPPLE Africa silent for 24 hours. Can they do it? Susie, a previous RIPPLE Africa volunteer, thinks they can and has given them the challenge. She has a JustGiving page where anyone can sponsor them to keep quiet for a whole day!





Please click here to sponsor Geoff and Force and join the effort to make Malawi a quieter place for 24 hours :) http://www.justgiving.com/geoffandforce

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books!

Sunday, June 17, 2012

10 green ebooks for Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day! If you haven't bought your father anything yet and you're looking for a last-minute idea that can be delivered in 60 seconds, and your dad has an e-reader or tablet we have an idea for you, or actually 10 ideas!

Following our tradition of
ten recommendations on green ebooks, we have prepared a list is including ebooks on a varied list of green topics, which we think will suit different types of dads. We hope your dad is one of them and that you will find this list helpful!

The links of these ebooks are to Amazon.com and I apologize in advance to all the Nook, iPad, Kobo and Sony Reader owners, although a Kindle app can make it a good fit for some of the other options (iPad for example), or if you see something you like, just go and buy it in your own e-reader bookstore.

You can find all the lists published so far on our recommended green ebooks webpage (see examples at the bottom of this post).

Without further ado, here's tour list of 10 recommended green e-books for Father's Day:

1. The Good Food Revolution: Growing Healthy Food, People, and Communities by Will Allen - Gotham Books (May 10, 2012)

2. Off the Grid: Inside the Movement for More Space, Less Government, and True Independence in Modern America by Nick Rosen - Penguin (July 27, 2010)

3. Into Thick Air: Biking to the Bellybutton of Six Continents by Jim Malusa - Sierra Club Books (July 1, 2010)

4. The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir (P.S.) by Josh Kilmer-Purcell - Harper Collins, Inc. (June 1, 2010)

5. Making Transit Fun!: How to Entice Motorists from Their Cars (and onto their feet, a bike, or bus) by Darrin Nordahl - Island Press (13 April 2012)

6. Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: Profits, People, Purpose--Doing Business by Respecting the Earth by Robin White and Ray Anderson - St. Martin's Press (April 1, 2010)

7. A Chicken in Every Yard: The Urban Farm Store's Guide to Chicken Keeping by Robert Litt - Ten Speed Press (22 Mar 2011)

8. Sippewissett: Or, Life on a Salt Marsh by Tim Traver - Chelsea Green Publishing (December 12, 2011)

9. Reinventing Fire: Bold Business Solutions for the New Energy Era by Amory Lovins - Chelsea Green Publishing (September 26, 2011)

10. Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Shift Your Money from Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity by Michael H. Shuman - Chelsea Green Publishing (February 28, 2012)

More recommended green ebooks lists:

Best ebooks for green entrepreneurs

Best green marketing ebooks

Best green business ebooks


Happy Father's Day!

Raz @ Eco-Libris

Eco-Libris: Planting trees for your books!

Wednesday, June 13, 2012

5 Reasons a Tree Farm is Not a Forest


This is a guest column by Brent Hardy of
Extra Space Storage.

On a recent trip to visit family in Georgia, I noticed a familiar illusion as we sped down a country road. Rows and rows of trees lined up perfectly, deep into what looked to be a forest.

Just as that thought struck me, I recalled a short video I encountered recently, called 'A Tree Farm is Not a Forest' (http://www.denveropenmedia.org/project/promos/show/a-tree-farm-not-a-forest). I hadn't done any follow-up research after watching the 30-second clip, apart from a long, "Hmm..." but as I let myself become mesmerized by row after row of perfectly planted pine trees, I decided to look a bit further into the topic.

The E-books vs. paper books debate (http://www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp) will likely rage on for years to come, and even the most devoted environmentalist would be foolhardy to call for the complete elimination of paper, a medium that has allowed for most of the progress we've made as a society over the last millennium.

Still, every time we pick up a book or magazine, it's important to realize that what we hold in our hands was once a tree. It was cut down and shredded into wood chips, turned to a watery pulp mixture, and then flattened and dried with steam and giant rollers.

In order to manufacturer the paper that we need, tree farms are a necessity. But destroying the few remaining old growth forests we have should no longer even be considered.

Logging companies are fond of saying that for every tree they cut down, three are replanted. That may be the case, but a tree farm does not make a forest.

Here's why:

  1. Diversity

    In a forest, every acre boasts a wide variety of plant species, each providing shelter and sustenance to different animals. When a mix of pine, oak, magnolia, and bay are all cut down in order to plant one species of pine, what results may still look like a forest, but it's little different from a field of corn.

    Some animals may still utilize the new one-species tree farm, but others will be forced to migrate elsewhere (and finding a place to go gets more difficult every day).

  2. Different Canopy

    In a forest, the trees all vary in age. That results in a layered canopy. Light can penetrate in some places, allowing young saplings to grow. Different species can coexist because they're not overwhelmed by a faster-growing competitor that blocks out there light.

    In a tree farm, each tree was planted at exactly the same time. They grow at the same pace, creating an even canopy that blocks out light and prevents new species from growing underneath them.

  3. Different Ground Cover

    Decomposing logs are good for a forest. As they breakdown, they provide nutrients back to the soil. Mammals, reptiles and amphibians find shelter in them, and rainwater is absorbed in their decaying wood, slowly releasing water into the soil around them (and helping to slow the spread of forest fires).

    In a tree farm, there are rarely rotting logs on the ground. By removing a step in a plant's life cycle, the natural, circular progression of the forest is broken.

  4. Native Species May Not Be Present

    In Georgia, native longleaf pines have long been replaced with loblolly pines in tree farms, which grow faster and are thus more profitable. While loblolly causes no direct harm to the land it grows on (it's not an invasive species, like eucalyptus, choking out other species around it), its proliferation leaves little room for the longleaf to grow.

    When we replace important native species with farmed species, the other plants and animals that rely on the native species lose habitat and disappear as well.

  5. Different Purposes

    A forest exists for its own intrinsic value. Humans enjoy them for hiking, camping, and simply getting away from the business of city life.

    Tree farms are operated and controlled for profit, just like any other crop. They are planted and cut down at intervals, providing no longevity or diversity.

    It's a very simple difference.

In January, the 3,500-year-old Senator bald cypress tree burned to the ground (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/us/disbelief-still-as-florida-reacts-to-burning-of-3500-year-old-tree.html), a needless accident caused by a careless woman smoking drugs inside the tree.

It's a shame, not only for the loss of the tree, but due to the realization that we're not likely to have more trees like the Senator come along. We're still cutting down old growth redwoods on the Pacific coast and in Canada.

In a tree farm, we're raising wood and cutting it down when it's ready. The trees will never become millennia-old behemoths. That's because to grow giant trees, you have to let them live in a forest, and leave them alone.

Brent Hardy is the driving force for Extra Space Storage corporate responsibility through energy management and sustainability programs at www.extraspace.com. Brent leads a conversation about sustainability at http://extraspace.com/blog/category/Sustainability.aspx.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

Top 100 green apps - One Small Act from NBC Universal


We are creating
a list of the top 100 apps that will help you go green as part of our effort to promote a more sustainable lifestyle. Apps become an integral part of our life and a valuable tool and we believe we should also take advantage of them when it comes go greening up our life.

Every week we bring you a ne
w app from the 100 green apps list, and today we're happy to introduce an app from the green campaign of NBC Universal that encourages you to take small green steps, promoting the message that "the impact of your one small act does make a big difference."

Our app is One Small Act from NBC Universal. This app is for iPhone and iPad and is free.

Here are more details about
One Small Act:

Track all of the little things you do for the environment and discover how your impact compares with everyone else's.

FEATURES:
-Points and badges to celebrate your achievements
-Green tips from Hollywood’s biggest stars
-A spectacular digital garden that you help create.
-A newsfeed to see how friends and celebrities are going green
-An action plan
-An impact counter

Launched in May 2007, “Green Is Universal” is NBC Universal’s ongoing green initiative dedicated to raising Green awareness, affecting positive change to the environment, and greening its own operations. Throughout the year, NBC Universal uses it numerous media and entertainment platforms to educate the public on the environment, with over 200 hours of green-themed content airing across over 40 NBCU brands.






















Y
ou can check our list (it's still in work!) of top 100 green apps at http://www.ecolibris.net/greenapps.asp. As you'll see, this list is in work, but we promise to update it every week until we'll have all 100 green apps.

Last green app - VeganYumYum.

Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris

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

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Tiny Cracker Zoo by Christopher Master is joining the 100 trees Project!


An amusing antholog
y of eight shamelessly true stories that peels back the flannel veil, Tiny Cracker Zoo by Christopher Master beckons readers to revel in the savory agony of Master’s existence amidst fanatics of fast cars, wild game, and a grouchy God. Such a profusion of personal information is seldom heard outside of a psychiatrist’s office.

Curious? Good! Because this is really a great a book, and not only that but it also has joined the "100 Trees Project"!

This joint program was launched by Infinity Publishing, a leading self-publishing company together with Eco-Libris to promote environmental sustainability among its authors. Through the program, authors that publish with Infinity are able to plant 100 trees for the title they publish. These authors also have the option to add a special "100 trees planted for this book" logo to their book's design, as a way to showcase their commitment to environmental sustainability.

What Tiny Cracker Zoo is about? Truth, some believe, is stranger than fiction—even well-written pulp fiction featuring ridiculous man-sized outhouse leeches or a homicidal, incestuous hillbilly clan. However, as a recent television series so cleverly proved, the search for truth can be a more fascinating journey. With this in mind, I’ve compiled these short stories chronicling the droll occurrences of my formative years in bucolic Pennsyltucky. These deliciously embarrassing experiences embody just a few of my attempts at developing a resistance to the subtle tickle of detachment I felt between myself and virtually every denizen of my simple rural community.

About the author:
Despite enduring many years within the numbingly blissful cocoon of Pennsyltucky, I now run Infinity Publishing’s cover design division. When not obsessing about the television show “Lost,” I sit in front of my computer trying to transcribe my memories though I inevitably get distracted by my feverish zeal for toy robots in disguise. In spite of this torrid love affair with my abundant collection of shape-shifting Transformers, I have been blissfully married to my beautiful, patient, and vastly smarter wife Marianne for over 3 years. We have two cats who are also smarter than I am.





Yours,
Raz @ Eco-Libris