While Kindle and other electronic book readers may one day replace the printed word, over 4 billion books are
published in the United States annually, mostly from virgin paper. It’s important to buy used and keep books in circulation as long as possible—part of what Eco Encore is all about—but now there’s a way to offset your current library and every book along the way to that faraway digital-reading utopia.
For less than a dollar per book, Delaware-based Eco-Libris will plant a tree for every book you own. You even get stickers in the mail you can paste into the covers to show each book’s offset status. It’s easy. Online you decide how many books you want to offset with trees and then pay through paypal or with a credit card. One of three Ecolibris partners does the planting.
While Eco-Libris hopes to offset a half-million books by the end of 2009, the goal is miniscule compared to the billions of books put into circulation annually. That’s why Eco-Libris’ broader agenda is an overall more sustainable book industry. At their website, readers can learn everything about what both book buyers and publishers can do to make the business of books more sustainable overall. That is, until nobody reads on paper anymore. That’s so 20th century, anyway.
