Recycled Reading

Hello Greenies! I am so excited about the dialogue the bottled water post started. That's why I write this blog: to share good information that I see and then to get your feedback. Check out the comments section and leave your thoughts! Also, feel free to tell me things you would like to see me post about. I can't think of everything (shocking, I know!).

On to the next subject. I am in a book club. There are about 13 people in my book club and we read about 1 book per month. So total for just our club we read 156 books a year. I know lots of people who are in book clubs. While we are doing something good for our brains, we are doing something bad for the environment.

About 20 Million trees are cut down annually for virgin paper used for the production of books sold in the U.S. alone.

It turns out, the publishing industry does not use recycled paper (Why not?) and doesn't necessarily use trees from certified forests. I found this website dedicated to changing that! They are called Eco-Libris and their mission is to raise awareness of what we can be doing to take responsibility for the impact our reading has on the environment.

They are asking that we donate $1 for every book that we read, which they will use to plant one tree. They plant trees all over the world which is not only beautifying some third world countries but also making reading a sustainable activity for us.

For every dollar you give, they will send you a Eco-Libris sticker (made of of recycled paper, of course) for you to stick on your book to help spread the word. They are also trying to get book publishers to move in the direction of using only recycled paper.

If you are in a book club, bring this idea up to them. At the end of each year it will be $12 per person which doesn't seem like too much to give back for the privilege of reading! You can also rock it "old school" and get your books from the library. If you do both, then you are a SUPER Greenie!!