Going Green

In light of Chynna's hilarious post on how to annoy prospective editors and provide solid craft tips, I hope to do the same next week...


But today's post I reserved for a new company. Have you heard of the new way to "go green" with regard to books? Here's a letter we recently received:

My name is Raz Godelnik and I thought WOW! readers might be interested to learn about Eco-Libris , a new green biz I co-founded that lets book readers balance out the paper used for the books they read by planting trees. An interesting fact is that although balancing out books is relevant for both men and women, we received so far much more attention from women. So without further delay, here's an introduction to Eco-Libris:

About 20 Million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone. What we want to do is to raise awareness to the destructive environmental impacts of using paper for the production of books and provide people with an affordable and easy way to do something about it.

The process itself is fairly simple - upon entering our website (http://www.ecolibris.net/), customers decide how many books they would like to balance out. They then pay for it online and a tree is planted for each of these books. Customers also receive a sticker made of recycled paper for every book they balance out saying "One Tree Planted for this Book." They can later display these stickers on their books' sleeves. In the few days that we have been online we already had people from all over the world balancing out their books and planting trees. The feedback so far is very encouraging.

We have partnered with three highly respected US and UK registered non-profit organizations that work in collaboration with local communities in developing countries to plant the trees. These trees are planted in high ecological and sustainable standards in Latin America and Africa, where deforestation is a crucial problem, and planting trees not only helps to fight climate change and conserve soil and water, but also benefits many local people, for whom these trees offer many benefits and an opportunity for a better future.

Eventually and hopefully sooner than later, books will be made from recycled paper or other eco-friendly materials and logging for paper will stop. On that day we'll happily move on to a new cause, but until then we think every book reader should take action. We also don't forget the responsibility of the book publishing industry to the current situation and we intend to become a strong voice in a call for change towards printing books in an eco-friendly manner.

Please check out our website (http://www.ecolibris.net) and let me know what you think. You can also check our news release.

Like any new green business we try to spread the word about us to all the greenies, book lovers, and everyone in between. If you could feature us at your site that really would be great! I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thanks!

Best regards,

Raz Godelnik
Eco-Libris
http://www.ecolibris.net/
raz@ecolibris.net

Way to go Eco-Libris! Once I checked out their site, I "planted" trees without a shovel or even a drop of sweat. I just donated a little money to the cause. What a novel idea! No pun intended.