With September rolling around and the back to school shopping in full swing, books are more prominent than ever. It’s officially book season. And whether you’re an elementary schooler, a senior in high school, a university student, a parent, or a loving aunt/uncle/grandparent… books will probably be on your radar in the coming weeks.
So assuming you know that books are going to be on your shopping list in the near future and assuming that you know that making books requires chopping down a lot of trees, how do you resolve this dilemma?
Eco-Libris, a company founded by Israelis, is in the business of greening your books. While other companies help offset carbon emissions, Eco-Libris helps readers offset their literary carbon emissions. For every book that you’d like to offset, the company will get one of their partners in a developing area to plant trees (thus essentially replacing the trees that were chopped down to produce the book you’re reading).
In return, not only do you get to feel better about your book shopping, but you get a bookplate sticker to put on your book – an Eco-Libris sticker. The sticker is not only a play on the classic Ex Libris bookplate sticker, but it lets people know that you care about the trees used to create paper used in books.
So how exactly does Eco-Libris work?
People log onto their website and decide how many books they’d like to offset (the website recommends one tree per book). By providing an affordable and simple book-offsetting solution, Eco-Libris makes it that much easier to replace the trees used to make your pages. Then the company works with planting partners to plant the customer’s trees in developing countries moving towards a more sustainable future. Everyone wins. You get to read sustainably, and somewhere out there a tree cleans our air.
Looking for more ways to ‘green’ your reading?
Reuse It or Lose It: Ready It Again, Sam
Have an Environmentally and Child Friendly Hebrew Book Week
Author: Karen Chernick
Much to the disappointment of her Moroccan grandmother, Karen became a vegetarian at the age of seven because of a heartfelt respect for other forms of life. She also began her journey to understand her surroundings and her impact on the environment. She even starting an elementary school Ecology Club and an environmental newsletter in the 3rd grade. (The proceeds of the newsletter went to non-profit environmental organizations, of course.) She now studies in New York. Karen can be reached at karen (at) greenprophet (dot) com.
Hey!, I’ve been looking for a site like yours since last Wednesday. The last place I searched (should be the first) was in Google, using the keywords “Shopping Engine”. Anyway, it was worth the search because I really like this website and your post regarding able Reading: Offset Your Books With Eco-Libris | Green Prophet looks very interesting for me. Definitely Stumbled!
Not bad… Not bad.
Nice site, thanks for information!
I am thrilled that I am partnering with Eco-Libris to plant a tree for every copy of my short story collection, The White Road and Other Stories, which will be published this coming Monday, Sept 1st. The delight of getting a book deal was tempered for me at the guilt about all the paper that would go in to making my beautiful book, Eco-Libris has the perfect solution. I look forward to a long and happy relationship with them, and wish them much success.
Tania
Karen, thank you for the mention!
Jeff – profits and the environment are not at odds—only greed and the environment conflict each other, and believe me this is not the case here as you can learn from our affordable prices. Green businesses are an important growth engine of the green economy and we’re proud to be one of them.
Second, I definitely agree with you that the book industry need to change its practices and this is also important part of our operations – spreading the word about the need in change and the alternatives, creating resources of information, supporting the work of both publishers and authors who choose to go green and print on recycled paper or with other green alternatives, work with libraries, and more. We see ourselves not only as a green company that provides a solution, but also as an agent of change.
The example you brought up of ‘Cradle to Cradle’ is a great one and we sure hope to see more books printed like this one. We know the future will have several green alternatives to the current virgin paper and we try to explore them – for example, we have a resource page where we present links to articles and studies on the debate about e-books and whether they’re environmentally superior than paper made books (http://www.ecolibris.net/ebooks.asp).
And we’re very excited from the upcoming book of Tania Hershman, which every printed copy of it is balanced out in advance.
Last word – we have now also the website in Hebrew as we work to increase our presence in Israel – http://www.ecolibris.co.il
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly at raz [at] ecolibris [dot] net.
Best,
Raz Godelnik
Eco-Libris
This is a nice idea, although something about it really bugs me. First of all this for-profit company will probably make a fortune off of us conscientious consumers. Second of all, while it’s great to plant a tree in some far off place in the world where the trees used to make the book I’m reading may or may not have come from (and are being planted anyway as part of the paper business’s forestry efforts), shouldn’t we be focused on changing the way we publish books? I know book libris is a short-term solution, but to me it misses the mark. An example of what I would like to see is in William McDonough, the famed eco-architect. He printed his book “Cradle to Cradle” on a recyclable plastic that can be recycled down to the parts per million time and time again.
How much does it cost to offset your book (plant a tree)? I am assuming Tania’s book is already offset?
– Karin
and excitingly, in 7 days time, Tania Hershman’s book ‘The White Road & other stories’ will be published in the UK by Salt Publishers, and the book will be the first collection of short stories with an Eco Libris symbol on!
More info here: http://www.taniahershman.com ……