Despite the common idea that you need to be wealthy to really be green, there are many ways to both save money and be environmentally friendly. One of those ways, a personal favorite of mine, is buying used instead of new. Especially when you are buying books. Choosing to buy a used book rather than a new one saves a tree, lessens the impact from printing the book, and if you buy it from a local used book shop lowers the impact that shipping has on the environment.

But what about renting books? The Netflix CEO is taking the rental idea from movies to textbooks. Instead of spending hundreds of dollars buying new textbooks for a class you will only be in half the year you can now rent them for a fraction of the cost. It is definitely something I wish had been around when I was in college.

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Last week we wrote here about our partner Chegg and their renting textbooks’ model. This is a great model and it’s an example of the innovative thinking that tries to find an alternative to the current expensive (average of USD 1,000 per year in the US), not environmental friendly and irritating textbook system.

And this search has generated another great idea which has a good chance to influence the future of the textbook industry: open source free online textbooks. This innovative concept comes from Flat World Knowledge (thanks to Springwise for the update!)

How does it work exactly? Flat World Knowledge explains on their website

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Green news from Turkey. The Turkish newspaper Today’s Zaman reported on a new new book exchange campaign launched by the Ministry of Education that will be aimed at “saving millions of trees, protecting the environment and contributing to the country’s economy.”

Every year 155 million books are distributed by the Ministry to students in Turkey. Most of these books, according to the article, are thrown into the trash at the end of the year. The cost of these books to the Turkish public is more than USD 800 million annually.

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Good news from China: the China Daily reported yesterday that the Chinese Ministry of Education will allow the reuse of textbooks in primary and middle schools in some rural areas starting this new semester.

The newspaper reports that

…the central government will set up a fund for the purchase of these textbooks, which will be issued to students free of charge. Students will be required to keep the books in good order for their reuse by others.

This initiative is a win-win deal: parents will spend less on textbooks, and the environment will benefit as well - less trees will be cut, less energy will be used, and pollutant produced in paper-making will be reduced.

If this initiative will be implemented in all of China, it can have an enormous impact because of China’s huge population. Check out these figures: it is estimated that $4.2 billion is spent on the purchase of textbooks during the nine-year period of compulsory education nationwide, and that about 450,000 tons of paper is used annually in the printing of these books, which requires the consumption of about 9 million trees!

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