Balancing the Books

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Feel guilty about reading books because they are made out of paper that come from trees? Well, there’s something you can do about it. And I don’t mean give up reading.

Read up on creative ways to be a green bookworm, and then check out Eco-Libris, an organization dedicated to finding a way to balance out our need to read with our desire to prevent further damage to the environment through tree logging. The answer, Eco-Libris believes, is in the use of recycled paper and eco-friendly paper. But that’s still a long way off.

Meanwhile, Eco-Libris is challenging publishers, bookstores, and readers to balance out the paper used for books by planting a tree for every book read. They’ve set a goal of balancing out half a million books by the end of 2009 by, you guessed it, planting half a million trees. And that’s where you and I can help. Eco-Libris has joined with planting partners throughout the developing world who will plant trees on your behalf, based on the number of books you want to balance out.

Starting at 5 books at $5, you can balance out as many books as you like, guaranteed that the equivalent number of trees will be planted. It might seem like not much – but if we all balanced out the books, half a million trees would be planted in no time at all.

Image: Faeryan