Green Options

This review is part of the Green Books campaign. Today 100 bloggers are reviewing 100 great books printed in an environmentally friendly way. Our goal is to encourage publishers to get greener and readers to take the environment into consideration when purchasing books. This campaign is organized by Eco-Libris, a green company working to green up the book industry by promoting the adoption of green practices, balancing out books by planting trees, and supporting green books. A full list of participating blogs and links to their reviews is available on Eco-Libris website.

Are you hungry for solutions that will relieve you from the guilt and challenge of living a stylish yet environmentally conscious life? Then The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget by cable TV personality Josh Dorfman (aka, The Lazy Environmentalist) by Stewart Tabori & Chang is a must-read. Realizing that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, Dorfman has written a terrific book with the overarching goal of helping us all make a positive impact on our world without having to compromise too much.

And contrary to what many people think, Dorfman explains how it can be affordable and easy to lead a greener life.  In fact, The Lazy Environmentalist on a Budget provides readers with solutions that don’t require much effort or financial commitment, but yield significant green payback. He covers everything from ways to reduce/reuse/recycle and conserve energy and water, to less obvious practices like greening your transport, eco-remodeling and finding non-toxic cleaning supplies. The resources include everything from denim repair to ways to borrow stuff from your neighbors to which stores have the best deals on affordable eco-furnishings, sustainable beauty products and budget-friendly organic cotton baby goods.

This post was originally published on Eco-Libris blog on October14.

If you didn’t hear yet about Zumbox, you need to recheck your news resources.

In the last couple of weeks you hear about them everywhere - from an announcement on two new clients: the cities of San Francisco and Newark (NJ) that will start using their web-based mail delivery system to an announcement on a partnership with New York City for Five Borough Pilot Program.

So what is exactly Zumbox? according to their website “Zumbox delivers paperless mail online – from street address to street address. What used to only be sent as paper mail can now be sent without the paper. How? We’ve created a nationwide paperless postal system with a Zumbox for every street address in the United States, including yours.”

This post was originally published on Eco-Libris blog on September 5.

On August 19 Cleantech Group published a report that was supposed to put an end to an ongoing debate on the question if the Kindle and other e-readers are actually greener than physical books. The release’s title was “E-readers a win for carbon emissions.”

It was supposed to be the life cycle analysis many people, including myself were waiting for. I have to admit I was very excited to read about it as we follow this debate for a long time. I decided to read it and see if this is really it. If it’s really over.

The report, entitled ‘The Environmental Impact of Amazon’s Kindle’ was written by senior reporter Emma Ritch. I read the executive brief (7-page long) and was happy to find a well-written analysis that integrates many pieces of information that together create a more coherent picture. At the same time I wasn’t that sure about the validity of the findings.

There were two main issues that bothered me mostly: the carbon footprint of a single Kindle and the assumption about the number of e-books the average user is reading. As you’ll see these are important factors in the analysis and have significant influence on the findings.

Here are my thoughts about them in more details:

1. What’s the carbon footprint of a single Kindle?

This is an important part of the analysis - you can’t have a comparison between physical books and the Kindle without this figure. But fortunately the report has it: “…the second-generation Kindle represents the same emissions as 15 books bought in person or 30 purchased online. That would yield a range of between 60.2 to 306 kg of CO2, or an average of 167.78 kg of CO2 during its lifespan.”

This post was originally published on Eco-Libris blog on July 20.

As part of our efforts to promote green printing, we continue to closely follow the printing industry, keep you posted with printers who have already adopted eco-friendly practices in their business and speak with them on the state of green printing, the trends, the challenges in the present and their plans for the future.

We posted already two interviews with green printers (Greg Barber and Deb Bruner) and today we are happy to have another green printer on our blog: Livio Ciciotti of Monroe Litho (Rochester, NY).

Livio Ciciotti is an Account Executive with Monroe Litho based in Rochester, NY. He is a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Technology’s School of Print Media. He has been invloved in printing since high school. Livio is also in the Marine Corps Reserve, an honor graduate from the School of Infantry he now serves with 3rd Battalion 25th Marines out of Buffalo, NY and is preparing for a deployment to Afghanistan.

This post was originally posted on Eco-Libris blog on June 21.

The added value of going green is constantly growing. According to a survey conducted lately, 46% of consumers say they would shop at a retailer more if it was environmentally friendly. Another study of Mintel shows 62% of customers choose a restaurant based on their commitment to the environment.

This post was originally posted on Eco-Libris blog on May 8.

“Sammy and Sue Go Green Too!” is not only a great children’s book, but also a very inspirational one both for kids and their parents.

If you had a chance to read our review of the book you probably know already that a) this book is about a joint mother-daughter journey into the green world and b) Eco-Libris collaborates with the publisher, Beaufort Books, and the author, Suzanne Corso, to encourage the readers of this wonderful book to green up their reading and take a step to support the environment by planting a tree with us for their copy.

The book is already receiving enthusiastic feedback and endorsements. On March it was selected as Book of the Year by NWYA’s NY Reads Program, which is a program of New York Women’s Agenda (NWYA), a city-wide book discussion based on the reading of one book selected each year.

This post was originally published on Eco-Libris blog on April 27.

I love bears. Polar, Panda, Brown - you name it. Therefore I was immediately was fond of our books this week - a children’s book that takes place in a little bears’ heaven and where the main characters are bears (and very funny ones!).

Our book this week is:

The Legend of Honey Hollow

We mentioned it firstly last month when we announced on a collaboration with the author who plant a tree for every book sold on her signing events and provides buyers of the book with our sticker (made of recycled paper), saying: “One tree planted for this book”.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published on April 22, 2009 at the Eco-Libris blog.

Happy Earth Day everyone!

We wanted to write a special post for Earth Day and fortunately we have great news to report: The Book Industry Environmental Council announced last week it has set goals for cutting the U.S. book industry’s greenhouse gas emissions in 20% by 2020 (from a 2006 baseline) with the intent of achieving an 80% reduction by 2050.

This is very exciting news and as the Council pointed out in its press release, this industry-wide commitment is a global first in publishing and hence has tremendous importance.

Because of the importance of this move and its implications for the book industry, we thought it’s important to take closer look at it and analyze it from strategic and operational points of view. Hopefully later on we’ll also bring you an interview with one of the Council’s leaders.

This post was originally posted on Eco-Libris blog on April 2.

This week we have a very unique book that suits perfectly not only the upcoming Earth Day but also Passover, the Jewish holiday that we’re celebrating this month.

Our book for today is:

The Barefoot Book of Earth Tales

As we mentioned yesterday, in celebration of Earth Day, Barefoot Books are working together with Eco-Libris this April to plant a tree for every copy sold of this book!

Author: Dawn Casey

Dawn Casey has always been passionate about traditional tales, believing that folklore can help answer some of the toughest questions about humankind. This is Dawn s second project with Barefoot Books, following The Great Race (2006). Dawn combines writing with a career as a primary school teacher. She and her family live in East Sussex, England.

Illustrator: Anne Wilson

Anne Wilson gains much of her inspiration and sense of color from her travels. She has an MA in illustration from St. Martin’s College of Art, London, and has been illustrating children’s books for several years. This is Anne’s fourth project for Barefoot Books, following Storytime (2005), The Great Race (2006) and We’re Sailing Down the Nile (2007). Anne live s in Reading, England, with her husband and daughters.

This post was originally posted on Eco-Libris blog on March 24.

Green buildings have never been so popular, at least when it comes to public policy. Looking at the stimulus plan you see how a concept that until lately was relatively marginal suddenly becomes a significant policy tool, which is expected to stimulate the economy, lower energy consumption, create jobs and support the environment, all the same time.

But what does a green building or a green home actually means? well, for most of us it would be difficult to get into specifics as so few had the chance to experience it personally, but for Avrim and Vicki Topel know the answers.

They have built a green home (LEED Silver Certified) at Kennett Square, PA and they’re sharing their story in a new book entitled “Green Beginnings: The Story of How We Built Our Green & Sustainable Home“. This book is a valuable book for anyone interested in going green or building a green home. It is also part of a greater effort of the Topel’s experience to share their experience with others, which includes tours in the house and a documentary video. And last but not least, as we reported earlier, Eco-Libris is collaborating with the authors to plant trees for the copies sold of the book.

As we wanted to learn more about the authors’ experience and their book, we asked Avrim Topel to join us for an interview.

This post was originally published on Eco-Libris’ blog on February 26.

How green is your toilet paper? Not sure? Here’s the guide that will give you the answers: Greenpeace has just released on Monday its latest Recycled Tissue and Toilet Paper Guide.

The report is providing customers with important information about tissue products and toilet paper using 3 criteria: usage of 100% recycled paper, at least 50% post consumer recycled paper and bleached without toxic chlorine compounds.

Each category includes ranking of brands, where products that meet 3 criteria are recommended, products that meet 2 criteria are defined as “can do better” and products that meet only one or no criteria at all are “to be avoided”.

Let’s focus for a minute on toilet paper, the most popular product among the ones reviewed in this report. The brand in the first place is Green Forest, which uses 100 percent recycled and 90 percent post-consumer content, as well as chlorine-free manufacturing processes. Other brands that are also recommended are: 365, Natural Value and Seventh Generation.

And who’s to be avoided? Well, when it comes to toilet paper you will find there few familiar names: Scott, Target, Wal-Mart, Kleenex Cottonelle, Chramin, Quilted Northern and Angel Soft. According to the report they all use zero recycled paper (and of course zero post consumer content) and are bleached with chlorine compounds [just take into consideration the follwoing comment from Greenpeace: In the few cases where companies did not respond to our request for verification of recycled content percentages and whitening processes used, we assumed 0% overall recycled, 0% post-consumer recycled and ECF bleaching.]