Chekhov's Mistress
Who Pays for Your Books? Mother Earth
When my wife and I reluctantly bought an SUV to fit our suddenly large family, the first thing I did to assuage my feelings about gas guzzling (being a repentant former Porsche driver) was to offset our carbon emissions. I went to the TerraPass Website, calculated our emissions for the year and paid the piper. It’s a small thing, particularly since we only drive a couple thousand miles per year, but what I discovered is that the real energy sucking culprit is our household use of electricity. Paid that too.
I don’t know quite enough about offsets to say whether I’m merely performing some politically correct penance for my consuming ways or this is a truly valuable act. I suppose the biggest thing buying offsets does for me is making me aware of what I’m doing, keeping score as a dieter might, where awareness of that extra truffle or two every day might actually impact my bottom line.
Today I found a new form of offsets: Eco-Libris. The money line from their Website is that 20 million trees are cut down every year for our books in the U.S. alone. They offer you the opportunity to plant one tree for every book you buy at a cost of only $1 per tree, which also looks like it scales (500 trees cost $450). Of course I doubt that each and every book you buy eats up an entire tree, but there’s something to be said for simplicity here.
So, for about the cost of an extra (decent) bookcase to house your family of literature you can lessen the environmental impact of that reading habit. Not sure what to tell you if you’re a blogger or book reviewer who gets review copies in the mail (I just donated a couple hundred of those to Housing Works who sells them and uses the money for AIDS outreach), but, like with the carbon emissions, maybe the thing here is awareness. E-book anyone?
comments
Well I’m doing my part. I’m writing into a software program called Storyspace (http://eastgate.com/storyspace) that produces a hypertext narrative form. I just love it and not a bit of tree, not a twig need be used.
And oh yes, my nearly eleven year-old Honda CRV gets 24 mpg so I’ve never considered ALL SUVs guzzlers and resent the broad label because of a few.
– susan (11/06 at 02:15 PM)
Mine is a Honda Pilot (we sold our civic to get the bigger SUV), which is huge and our mileage is indeed pretty bad. Thanks for the info on Storyspace, I’ll check it out (and p.s. reading Blood Meridian thanks to you - more on that later)
– Bud Parr (11/06 at 02:20 PM)
Bud,
I enjoyed reading your post and thank you for writing on Eco-Libris.
I definitely agree with what you wrote about awareness. That’s an important part of our way toward sustainable future. I’m sure that as people will be more aware to the impacts of their activities on the environment, they will be more willing to take action and green up their life.
Eco-Libris is aiming to raise awareness to the environmental impacts of using paper for the production of books and provide people with an affordable and easy way to do something about it. 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.
I am positive that with the support of all the book readers out there who want to help the environment, we can make reading more sustainable.
Raz Godelnik
Eco-Libris
http://www.ecolibris.net
– raz godelnik (11/06 at 03:27 PM)
The only real drawback to e-books is that you can’t quite curl up with them!
– Natalia (11/06 at 05:44 PM)
The thing is that paper pulp comes from farmed trees, not old-growth forests. Yes, recycled paper has lower overall impact, but paper is, in fact, a form of carbon sequestration and the environmental impact of a book is much lower than the impact of the light to read it by.
– Don (11/27 at 05:34 PM)
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About this Post
- Posted by: Bud Parr
- Date: November 06, 2007
- Filed Under:
Song of Myself: Diary
- Comments:5
- Links to this Post: Technorati
